Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is important that we look at the issue of vacancy and dereliction. The bottom-up approach is critically important to all of this. The issue has to be community-led and sustainable into the future. Simply dressing up buildings will not be sufficient. It is about bringing life back into rural towns and communities and improving the lives of people. It is also about dealing with the housing crisis. We need to look at the villages and towns that have derelict homes. That should occur in the middle of a housing crisis. We should use compulsory purchase orders much more. We will have to look at that for the future. If a developer or someone else with a building or row of houses is waiting for the price of the development to build up, compulsory purchase needs to be actioned much more quickly.

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