Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The pre-condition for well-being of the people of this country is for them to have a secure, affordable roof over their heads. One of the standing scandals in that regard, besides the abysmal failure of the Government to deliver new public and affordable housing, is the inability to deal with the utter scandal of vacant and derelict properties the length and breadth of the country. They are sitting there torturing people who are actually in need of housing as they lie empty but could be used to house people impacted by the housing crisis. The measures that the Government has taken to deal with this have been self-evidently not working. The answers to a number of parliamentary questions - as the Taoiseach may have seen, they got some coverage in the newspapers in the last day or two - are pretty stark. There is now €14.3 million outstanding in vacant site charges. There is €7.9 million outstanding in derelict site levies. In 2020, €378,000 was collected in derelict site levies out of €5.4 million that was levied. On the vacant site levy, it is even worse, with €21,000 collected out of €11.8 million levied in just one year. Only seven councils sought to bother to impose the vacant site levy, and 14 councils did not bother to impose the derelict site levy at all. My question is very simple. First of all, judging from these figures, how is it that there is no serious intent whatsoever to actually pursue the vacant and derelict site levies? Is it not self-evidently the case that this is not enough? They are not working and we need much more radical measures, such as robust use of compulsory purchase orders, to get hold of vacant and empty buildings to use to address the housing crisis.

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