Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

We should contrast what is happening in respect of vacancy in Ireland with what the Spanish Government has just announced. It has announced that 50,000 vacant homes are going to be brought back into use and made available at affordable rents for adults who are still living with their parents. That is the kind of initiative we need. It is making good use of its housing stock and is giving people the ability to live independently and get on with their lives. It is a welcome measure and the Government here should be looking at similar measures.

Earlier in the discussion, the Minister for Finance talked about the Central Statistics Office census data. We have an unusual situation where the Government seems to rely on the CSO census data for everything except vacant homes. That is incredibly unusual and we must ask ourselves why it is the case. The Minister for Finance was quite dismissive of the census data on vacancy. He claimed that of the 160,000 vacant homes recorded in the last census, excluding holiday homes, a considerable number could be empty because people were on holiday for a few weeks and that was why the houses could be counted as vacant. If the Minister knew about these data, he would know that the CSO vacancy data are compiled by an enumerator classifying a dwelling as vacant if there was no contact with the property owner following multiple visits and after inquiries were made with neighbours.

Enumerators cannot classify a home as vacant simply because it is empty on the basis that somebody is on holidays. They must visit it on multiple occasions and must also check with the neighbours that the home is actually vacant and not that somebody is on their holidays. After that, field supervisors are required to approve the classification of each dwelling as vacant. Huge resources are put into the census collection of vacancy data. It is very serious that the Minister for Finance, who is charged with implementation of the vacant homes tax, does not understand the census vacancy data and how they are collected. That is very serious because it means the Cabinet, when it made its decision on setting the vacant homes tax at a derisory 0.3%, did not understand the census data on this.

Given that, I implore the Government to revisit its decision on this. It was clearly made on a misunderstanding of the census data. In the Dáil today the Minister for Finance did not understand it. I urge the Government to look at this again and consider what can be done to bring vacant homes back into use. We need the Government to take this matter completely seriously. If it is going to dismiss the census data which it does not do in any other area, we need it to at least understand how those data are collected and understand the detail of this. The people are relying on it to understand that and get to grips with the housing vacancy problem we have. It is not okay for the Minister for Finance not to understand how those vacancy data are collected. It is not okay for decisions to be made under misunderstandings of those data. It is not okay for the Government countermotion only to cite the lowest possible count of vacancy in the country and to ignore the GeoDirectory data and census data.

We need the Government to move heaven and earth on this housing crisis. That means building more homes and taking a range of different measures, but it also means tackling vacancy and taking it with the utmost seriousness. It is not okay to have more than 100,000 vacant homes across the country not brought back into use. Of course, as we said before, there must be fair exemptions for genuine reasons for vacancy. After that, we need to do everything we can to get these homes back into use, get people out of homeless emergency accommodation and get adults in their 20s, 30s and into their 40s out of their parents' homes.

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