Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I like Deputy Bacik's phrase that this goes beyond housing, because too much of the debate on vacancy and dereliction focuses on our immediate need in terms of supply. I heard Deputy Gould suggest that we could tackle the entire housing crisis if we tackled dereliction alone. Of course we know that is not true. We need significant numbers of new builds and we need new supply. That is not to say we do not need to tackle dereliction but, like everything in the housing crisis, it will not be solved by one measure or a simplistic slogan.

There are many reasons for vacancy and dereliction, which can be divided into a number of different areas. The Drake Inn is a famous derelict site in Finglas. The old sack factory sits in Santry. Anybody who drives through Phibsborough will see the old mill. These are known sites which, in many cases, have been vacant or derelict for decades. In a similar way, we have some homes in housing estates that also have been unoccupied and derelict for decades. It is always for a multiple of reasons. It can often be due to a person's capacity or ability to tackle the problem. It may be the person's financial capacity or other challenges in his or her life. Alternatively, it may be because of complex legal titles on a large site or complex legal ownership issues.

In all of this, we have to adopt active land management. Local authorities need to roll up their sleeves, identify sites, owners and solutions and deliver results for their communities. Regardless of what we do in terms of legislation in this House, it will only be solved by our local authorities on the ground. Any of the big sites I talked about in the centre of our villages will increase supply but, more than that, they will tackle what is eating away at our villages and towns.

I welcomed Housing for All last year because specific and definite measures are now available, both to owners and local authorities, to tackle vacancy and dereliction. Let me take as an example the site I mentioned earlier of the old pub at the centre of Finglas village known as The Drake Inn. That site has been derelict for some time. Housing for All has a number of measures that allows its owner to activate the site. First, we have made changes in terms of planning, to make it easier for that person to build on the old pub on a small scale. Second, the Croí Cónaithe cities scheme will allow the owner of that property, in an open-book process, to apply for below-cost, owner-occupied apartments. We have talked a lot about apartments only being available to rent. Croí Cónaithe cities, which many Members have criticised in this House, prioritise owner-occupied, below-the-cost-of-construction homes. It is available for the owner or developer of that site to apply to the Croí Cónaithe scheme, with the Government subventing it in order to make it viable. It is not that we want to give developers €100,000. We want to make sure that those homes are built. At present, it is not viable to build on that empty site, which is why it has been empty for 30 years.

In terms of the capacity of a person, there may be issues going on in his or her life. The person may have other challenges and may not be able to develop the site. The local authority has to be able to step in.

We want to have an easier, more streamlined compulsory purchase process, because local authorities are too afraid to issue compulsory purchase orders, CPOs. Every Member of this House knows about a complicated site on which a council has spent too much money, yet that example is thrown at us repeatedly when we ask why councils will not develop other sites. We need a simplified process. In the context of Housing for All, I welcomed the Housing Agency providing a more streamlined pathway for CPOs and allowing local authorities to use CPO powers. The Housing Agency is meeting banks and An Post to talk about properties. We have tools that will help owners and developers, which I have outlined, and we also have tools to allow local authorities to develop.

There is no excuse for any local authority not to build public housing. There is so much money on the table. The Government has made all of the money that is needed available. There are many different options, including building cost-rental, affordable purchase or council housing. They can do that all on the sites I mentioned in our towns and villages that have been lying idle. They need to use CPOs and apply to the Department, but all the tools are available. One wonders what would happen if they spent a lot of money buying and developing a site and proved to be either below or above the viable cost. However, the cost of it lying idle is far greater to a community. Like a cancer, dereliction eats away at neighbouring buildings. We all know that; we do not need this report to tell us. The tools are there in Housing for All. Some have yet to be rolled out but, by and large, the financing and tools are all there for local authorities to avail of. I encourage them to avail of the tools. We should shame them if they do not do so.

I thank the committee Chair, Deputy Matthews, for initiating this report and for the skill with which he chaired meetings, with a large number of outside bodies coming in. The members of the committee tried to engage with them, and then there was the complex process of putting the report together. Deputies Gould and Ó Broin are correct that this was a very collegiate report. There is much that we can agree on. The issue of data is crucial. The Government stated last year that it was going to identify the data relating to this issue because people hold different views about how many vacant units there are. Even if there are only ten vacant units, I am of the view that a vacant homes tax is needed to deal with them. Of course, there are not ten; there are far more than that. There are anything between 90,000 and 134,000 homes that are vacant. The Government committed to collect the relevant data last year.

We need a vacant homes tax. I know it will not be a silver bullet. The Taoiseach recently stated that it might not result in the number of units people thought it might. As I said at the press conference about this report and as I informed the Taoiseach, we have to take the same approach to housing as we did to Covid. We need a whole-of-government response. A vacant home tax is one of those tools. It is only one, but it is important. I would be incredibly disappointed if this Government, having committed last year to putting in place a process for identifying the data, did not follow through and put in place a vacant homes tax. I say on the record of this House that if it is not included in the budget next year, Deputy Ó Broin will throw it back at me. I would welcome him doing so, because I am saying to my own Government that we need a vacant homes tax.

I welcome the report. I also welcome how it will address all of the issues to which I refer. I welcome the collegial way in which we put it together. Like so much of our housing policy, I look forward to it being implemented by fantastic local authority members across the country. We had a meeting of Fianna Fáil local authority members from the councils in Meath, Cavan, Kildare and several other counties recently. The issue of dereliction and vacancy was raised at that meeting. It is a challenge for local authorities and their members.

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