Francis Noel Duffy (Dublin South West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing my time with Deputy Ó Cathasaigh. I congratulate my colleagues on their work at the housing committee on this report and their commitment to tackling the issue of vacancy. In particular, I thank my Green Party colleague and chairman of the committee, Deputy Matthews.

The discourse of the housing committee in this report has surfaced honest dialogue and debate and, thankfully, cross-party agreement. Our vacancy levels are incomprehensible, especially in a chronic housing crisis. It is time for a robust policy to be introduced and for a commitment by the Department to implement the 39 recommendations of the report. As Dr. Frank O'Connor said, and as quoted in the report: "The State is not upholding its side of this foundational social contract by allowing extreme levels of vacancy and dereliction to persist. This is a dereliction of duty."

The Green Party has long campaigned for robust policies on the issues associated with vacancy, most recently through the Town Centre First policy and its measures. I am very grateful to Miriam Delaney, Orla Murphy and Philip Crowe, among other academics. They have spent much of their academic careers studying and analysing our towns and villages, seeking solutions to the question of how to bring people back to the heart of these cultural centres. Town Centre First aims to streamline the process of refurbishing derelict properties, particularly those over shops and standalone vacant units, which have the potential to revive our towns and villages and attract employment while creating healthier and safer communities. The concepts of the 15-minute city and ten-minute town come to mind when thinking about the potential future of our urban communities.

The Green Party's Bill on vacancy, tabled by Deputy Matthews, has a strong proposal on how we should implement the vacant-site tax, which is based on the Vancouver model. In Vancouver, the tax gained $86.6 million in net revenue, which the authorities reinvested in affordable housing programmes in the city, seeing a 26% reduction in the number of vacant homes.

In the context of sustainability and reducing carbon dioxide emissions, the built heritage of our towns, cities and villages provides an opportunity to reuse our existing building stock, thereby reducing the amount of embodied carbon, and assist in meeting our climate change targets.

Our town centres, where one third of the Irish population live, have been carved out and hollowed. People do not live in them in the main. A new paradigm is required to bring communities back to our cultural quarters, where vacancy is utilised for living, working and social gatherings.

On foot of this report, I urge the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to make a commitment such that we will no longer be concerned about vacancy levels, ranked tenth highest in the world in terms of the proportion of homes that are vacant and looking at boarded-up homes in our urban centres. A robust vacancy tax will assist in alleviating the housing crisis by bringing more homes back into use.

The refurbishment of existing buildings in urban centres does not entail an easy or fast procurement process. The structures are complicated, sometimes with ancient histories that need to be carefully protected. However, I believe our towns and villages deserve investment and, dare I say, tender loving care, which will only benefit all our society, visitors and future generations.

See this speech in context