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

Indeed, it is affecting every generation and community. It is why we are seeing students marching today with the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, and calling for an increase in student accommodation. It is why we are all hearing from employers who cannot recruit staff, schools that have teacher shortages and hospitals that cannot retain healthcare workers. This is because of the housing crisis across the country. Yet in this housing crisis, the Government has allowed a culture to embed in our urban centres whereby we see the blight and scourge of dereliction and vacancy taking hold and becoming embedded. The Government is not doing enough to address this. In some cases, the State is even contributing to dereliction and vacancy.

This week we saw an investigation by Ferghal Blaney of theIrish Mirror, which established that, shockingly, the HSE owns more than 250 empty buildings across the country. I raised this issue with the Taoiseach yesterday. In my constituency, these buildings include Baggot Street hospital, Bride Street health centre, Castle Street clinic and part of the old Meath Street hospital. These are properties which, as the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has said, could be repurposed to enable accommodation for healthcare workers and nurses struggling with the double whammy of a cost-of-living and housing crisis. We are also seeing other Government agencies in this situation. I am thinking of Department of Defence housing and barracks across the country that could be repurposed in a student accommodation crisis to provide much-needed housing and homes for students.

When I raised this issue with the Taoiseach yesterday, he acknowledged that under the Housing for All policy there has been an insufficient reduction in the number of HSE-owned properties allowed to lie vacant. I agree with him that the reduction has been insufficient, but, frankly, the attitude of Government agencies and Departments to their own land and buildings shows a disrespect for those people at the sharp end of the housing crisis. I refer to the students marching today who cannot find accommodation near their colleges, the families languishing on waiting lists and social housing lists at a time when more than 3,500 social housing units lie empty, working adults are stuck in their childhood bedrooms well into their 30s and 40s and, of course, the nearly 13,000 people who under the Taoiseach's watch are accessing emergency accommodation because they are homeless. We need to do more.

In Dublin Bay South, the Labour Party has been seeking to bring Baggot Street hospital back into use but we have received very little by way of positive engagement on this issue from the HSE. The sort of obfuscation we have got from the HSE shows a contempt for elected representatives and it is an affront to everybody affected by the housing crisis. How does the Government propose to address the vacancy and dereliction issue, which should be one key way to address the housing crisis? Our national government should be leading from the front on this aspect. What is the scale of the vacancy and dereliction problem in the property portfolios of State Departments and public bodies? Will the Government introduce a more co-ordinated push on vacancy and on bringing buildings back into use as housing for students, nurses and others who are so desperate for housing? Will the Taoiseach introduce this from central government?

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