Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the sales of those properties. That is a good thing, but the Minister must admit that on a day when 15,600 people are homeless, the idea that one Department would have 45 vacant properties is absolutely wrong. The OPW is involved in a total of 450 lease agreements which concern approximately 374 properties. We have seen the OPW lease property from Larry Goodman where someone measured it incorrectly and the taxpayer is paying rent for space that does not even exist, which is quite incredible. That was before the Minister of State's time in the Department.

Having vacant properties in a housing crisis is akin to exporting food in the middle of a famine. It is absolutely wrong and what I missed in the Minister of State's response was any real sense of urgency to offload the 45 properties and make sure they were brought into use. It is not just the OPW. It involves many departments, including the HSE and the Departments of agriculture and Justice. Hundreds of properties and parcels of land owned by the State are vacant, many for decades.

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