Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

9 o’clock

The vacant homes tax is a failure. We learned at the beginning of this year that only €2 million was raised from it and it applied to less than 3,500 properties. That is against a background where the census showed 160,000 vacant residential dwellings, 48,000 of which were vacant in both the 2016 census and the 2022 census. We then have about 20,000 derelict properties and one just has to walk around this city to see many of them. Does it not outrage the Minister, because it certainly outrages me, to walk past empty, vacant and derelict properties or sites which could be used for housing? How can this be when there are 13,500 people homeless and tens of thousands of people crammed into overcrowded conditions? How can it possibly be that we can have apartment blocks in this category? One in front of my office in Dún Laoghaire, with perfectly refurbished units, has been sitting empty for four years.

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