Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein)

There is nothing more disgraceful than knowing we have thousands of families and children homeless or in insecure accommodation while we have thousands of empty council homes around the country boarded up and left to rot. We constantly hear the Government saying that bringing vacant properties back into use is key to tackling the housing crisis and yet we have over 2,600 council houses boarded up across this State. We need these houses turned around and brought back into use for families and workers. There are people in these communities who have been languishing on housing lists for decades. Can we imagine how it feels for those people or those living in emergency accommodation to be walking by boarded council houses every day? In some cases, they are walking by for an entire year. It is insulting and it is not on. Leaving homes to rot is also causing other problems in our communities. We get antisocial behaviour. In my own constituency, you can actually see that some of these houses are used as a dumping site. We all understand that council properties need to be refurbished and it takes time. We all agree with that. However, there is no way it should take a year. The longer these houses are left sitting there, the more work that needs to be done on them to bring them back into use. The Minister needs to take the reins here. This would be an easy win for him. He should create a maintenance fund that councils can have access to, give the councils the authority to do the works without waiting on approval from the Department, and ensure the councils have directly employed housing maintenance teams that can do this work and also have the capacity to maintain these properties all year round. I ask the Minister to support this motion. It makes sense.

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