Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will keep my comments briefer then. I commend Deputy Matthews on bringing forward this Bill. I am delighted to support it on behalf of the Labour Party. As Deputy Matthews says, it is an honour to be able to bring forward Private Members' legislation in this House. It is something many of us have felt inspired in doing. I want to acknowledge that. I also commend him on his vision of a more streamlined process to tackle dereliction and vacancy. All of us are in favour of that and of his town centre first vision.

I think we would all be in agreement that derelict sites and buildings are haunting our cities. They are the ghosts of once-used homes and buildings left to fall into decay and disrepair.

We know the phrase "ghost signs" when we see those old shop signs on buildings. Well we have ghost homes everywhere across our cities and towns that were once in use and have fallen into disrepair. At a time of chronic housing shortage when over 12,400 people are homeless, when we see spiralling rents and queues around the block for apartment viewings, vacancy and dereliction should offend all of us who want to see an end to the housing crisis. Vacancy and dereliction are antisocial behaviours. Allowing buildings to fall into disrepair that could be used for homes is antisocial behaviour. Policies that enable or facilitate houses and sites to fall into dereliction are antisocial. Again, I think we all agree on that.

We know that official figures on dereliction and vacancy are somewhat contested. The Government's own vacant homes action plan identified about 166,000 vacant homes in January of this year, which is 7.8% of housing stock. We know that about 37,000 homes have become vacant since 2016, which is scandalous in itself. Hardware Association Ireland has done some really good investigate work on how to designate vacancy and, crucially, the level of vacancy that can be tackled and how many homes can be brought back into use. That is really important.

In his response to Deputy Matthews's Bill, the Minister of State spoke about initiatives being taken by the Government to address dereliction and vacancy. Certainly there are many initiatives coming out of the Department. I do not think anyone would deny that. One housing provider said to me that the three words that sum up the Minister's housing policy are "initiative, initiative, initiative". The problem is the lack of implementation, action and results. We are just not seeing results on tackling vacancy or indeed on delivery of homes. I am conscious the Government announced another fund this week for vacancy. This is on top of the vacant homes plan announced in January, yet another initiative. The difficulty for many of those seeking to provide homes, including social and affordable homes, or to build homes, is that the lack of detail and quite often the cumbersome red tape surrounding different initiatives has had the effect of creating uncertainty around the delivery of homes. That is a real issue the Minister needs to address. People who are in the business of providing homes need greater certainty as to how these measures will be implemented. For example, it does not help matters when the Minister promises the planning legislation mentioned by the Minister of State. We were promised that we would have that legislation this summer but this has not happened. I know it has been put back to the autumn. We were promised that legislation for the first refusal scheme for those renters who are facing the awful prospect of eviction following the lifting of the no-fault eviction ban would be with us before the summer recess but it is still not with us and we understand it will not be with us until the autumn. The delays, uncertainty and red tape are certainly not helping in the delivery of homes or the implementation of measures to address vacancy.

Deputy Matthews's Bill has some very commendable proposals within it that seek in a practical and creative way to tackle vacancy. His proposal that the derelict sites register be subject to online publication and that there would be a duty to notify the Minister after two years on the derelict sites register along with the strengthening of local authorities to CPO vacant and derelict buildings are all really important measures that could and should be taken up by Government.

Regarding current Government policies on dereliction and vacancy, we know there is a vacant homes tax. The Labour Party welcomed that. It is self-assessed at three times the local property tax rate. There is also a derelict sites register and derelict sites are subject to an annual levy but the derelict sites register is really lacking in any sort of reality. Just walking around my constituency of Dublin Bay South, we all know there is dereliction and vacancy on almost every street and yet when I look at the derelict sites register for Dublin City Council, I can identify only 12 properties in Dublin Bay South that are on it. There is a real difficulty with how we implement policies on dereliction. Policies may be there that are very positive and constructive but how do we implement them and ensure enforcement? How do we ensure that local authorities have the capacity to pursue and take action against dereliction? How do we ensure that speculators are not simply sitting on properties waiting for the value to go up?

The Labour Party has been putting forward creative and constructive proposals such a "use it or lose it" rule regarding uncommenced planning permissions on vacant property. We should be capable to taking action against that. The five-year period is too long. It encourages speculation. Let us look instead at reducing that to three years. Let us take action against those 30,000 live residential planning permissions across the Dublin City Council area that should be activated. Nobody is penalised for sitting on them and failing to activate them. Let us look at creative measures that can be employed to tackle vacancy and dereliction.

There is huge concern in my constituency about the failure to deliver social and affordable housing and nowhere is this more the case than Poolbeg and the Irish Glass Bottle site. I marched last week with the Irish Glass Bottle Housing Action Group in Ringsend. This group wants to see homes built. These are residents are actively seeking the building of homes and the delivery of up to 900 social and affordable homes promised on site and are desperately disappointed by the slow pace and the reneging on commitments to deliver on those social and affordable homes. There is uncertainty surrounding the delivery of so much and uncertainty around the Government's plans to tackle dereliction and we need to see more action and more results.

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