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

I have just arrived here from Bass Place in Dublin 2, a stone's throw from here, in my constituency. There is a terrace there of six houses that are on the Dublin City Council derelict sites register. We were there to highlight the need for the Government to take more effective action to tackle the scourge of vacancy and dereliction across the country. We are conscious that the numbers of sites represented on the derelict and vacant sites registers of local authorities underestimate the scale of the problem. We are calling on people to report vacant and derelict sites in their own area. We are calling on the Government to do more to tackle this scourge of vacancy and to do more to ensure reactivation of vacant homes, in particular, that could be repurposed to house our homeless people, so many of whom are now in emergency accommodation. According to Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures, there are approximately 160,000 vacant and derelict properties and yet Ministers are saying that the vacant homes tax, which the Government has brought in, will be largely ineffective with only 25,000 letters going out from Revenue this week.

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