Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The ongoing failure to tackle effectively the issue of derelict properties and vacant properties in our town centres and across the State is unacceptable when we have a housing crisis. Let me talk about north Donegal. It is not that long ago that people could have rented a family home in the towns of north Donegal for €600 per month but now they would be lucky if they got it for less than €1,100 or €1,200 a month, and that happened within a very short period of time. This is due to the policy of not building public housing for many years, forcing families into the private sector, as well as the unavailability of properties in the private sector. A key issue is the failure to go proactively after buildings that are derelict or vacant to turn them into housing or a resource for the community.

What we see in town centres in the north of Donegal are great community activists. They are in every single town and every single community. They are salt of the earth people but they are being let down by the failure of local authorities to work to turn derelict properties into viable resources. This is repugnant at a time when we have a profound housing crisis but, of course, in north Donegal, when we add the mica crisis and the houses that are crumbling around families, we have a perfect storm. Now, we are going to have to re-house families for a year or a year and a half while they are waiting for their homes to be rebuilt. They are now looking for the scarce resource of a private rental property to live in while their homes are being rebuilt at a time where there just are not any. If the Minister of State talks to Threshold or the Simon Community, he will know they cannot secure a house to rent in north Donegal. If somebody is on the housing assistance payment and is waiting to receive a council house or a public house, and they are told that the landlord is going to sell the property in six months, and it is all perfectly legal and proper notice has been given, that person cannot secure a home. There are good hard-working people who present and say they are going to be homeless soon or are homeless.

This is the scale of the crisis but I have not seen in recent years the urgency and the awareness to deal with that. People ask how we can have such a profound housing crisis, how we can have a scenario where rents are unattainable for working families, not just in the cities but even in places like Donegal, yet we allow so many properties and so many buildings to lie derelict. There is the issue of the failure to deploy these buildings to address the housing crisis but there is also the failure in letting down community activists.

For example, we praise Tidy Towns volunteers up and down the country regarding how they paint all the buildings that are lying empty and the fences and the walls, and how they restore civic pride in our communities, yet we allow a situation where there are derelict buildings. I will not pick out individual towns as that would be unfair but there are beautiful towns in north Donegal where people come in from the outside and ask what is going on. They ask why there are so many buildings that are derelict, lying empty or unused. The powers that be - the legal infrastructure, the local authorities and the Government of the land – have failed to put in place the environment where this is addressed. They have let down the community activists, let down our volunteers in the community and, most serious of all, failed families.

I take this opportunity to say very clearly to the Minister of State that this is unacceptable in a profound housing crisis where young people are leaving this country not because they do not have work, as was the case in the past in places like Donegal, but because they cannot afford to put a roof over their heads. Now, they cannot afford the rent. While all of that is happening, there are a huge number of empty, derelict or vacant properties that are not utilised by the State. It has to change and I hope this debate leads to that.

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