Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are 166,000 vacant homes in the State. The Government’s plan to tackle this is to bring in a levy of 0.3%. It looks like a joke, but it is so serious that it would be wrong to do so. The Minister has completely failed to tackle vacancy. Once again, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and now their partners, the Green Party, cosy up to the vulture funds, the land hoarders and the people who are sitting on homes where people should be living.

In France, for instance, a phased vacant homes tax was introduced, starting at 10% and ending at 15% of the potential annual rent. It resulted in a 13% reduction in vacancy rates in four years. If we were to follow the French example, that would mean more than 21,000 vacant homes would come back into use.

In my constituency of Cork North-Central, there are areas where vacancy is so high that one in 15 homes is vacant. These are homes in the heart of the city and there should be families and people living in them. Now, we are talking about some of these homes being left empty. Some of the homes are owned by local authorities. I know of a family who left a home last December and the house was boarded up this week, ten months later. I knew that house. I was in it. It was a perfect home that a family should have been living in for the past ten months.

I have heard about the vacant homes tax and the Government’s plan in that regard. Does the Minister sincerely think a vacant homes levy of 0.3% will work? It cannot work. It makes no sense. How can we compare that with the 7% derelict sites levy? Less than 0.5% tax is paid for a vacant site but a derelict site is set at 7%. It just shows the complete lack of understanding about it. We need a proper vacant homes tax. We need a carrot-and-stick approach. We must encourage landlords to get those houses into use, and where they do not, we must penalise them to get them to do that. It is being said this is a progressive budget, but there is virtually nothing in the budget when it comes to solving the housing crisis and the homelessness crisis.

The Glashaboy flood relief scheme is ongoing. It has been promised for the past ten years. Glanmire flooded again last weekend, ten years after this was promised. The problem is that when it comes to construction inflation and tendering increases, it has to go back out for tender again. Last year, funds of €14 million were put in place, but because of inflation, the cost has gone up to €17 million. Once again, the scheme has not been delivered. For years this Government has promised flood protection for Glanmire.

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