Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The quickest, easiest and most immediate response to the housing crisis is to deal with the scourge of vacancy and dereliction. In almost every estate in Dublin South-West one will find vacant houses. These are perfectly good homes or they were at one stage. They could be used to house families. Instead, they are a blight on the community. We got figures recently that 14,500 of the more than 100,000 vacant properties in the country are located in Dublin. There are more than 10,000 families in emergency accommodation in Dublin. This is the easy answer. We recently put a motion before South Dublin County Council calling on it to use its powers to bring these properties into public ownership by means of compulsory purchase orders and use them for social housing. Fianna Fáil abstained and Fine Gael voted against. Does the Taoiseach agree that this is what needs to be done nationwide, namely to use these vacant homes?

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