Carol Nolan (Offaly, Independent)

I welcome the motion and the opportunity to once again place a spotlight on the extraordinary levels of vacant housing. The motion is pragmatic and I will support it. When I think of housing vacancy rates, I think of a man dying of thirst while a giant pool of water remains within his reach. There is a stupidity and recklessness to this issue that is mind-boggling. In the middle of a great housing crisis, we are sitting on thousands of empty homes. It is ludicrous beyond words.

I have raised the unacceptably high levels of vacancy and dereliction in many local authority areas, including my area of Offaly, for some time. A year ago, almost to the day, I called on the Government to commit to increased funding to tackle vacancy and dereliction rates in County Offaly. The response from the then Minister, Heather Humphreys, was more or less that everything was fine and the Government was doing all it could to tackle the issue - but here we are a year later, going around in circles. The former Minister spoke about the urban regeneration and development fund, the town centre first policy and the Our Rural Future vision for a thriving rural Ireland. The Government also spoke of measures being rolled out on building acquisition, measures which would support local authorities in purchasing vacant and derelict buildings. Yet only in the past fortnight the Taoiseach has spoken in this House about how slow he feels the turnaround process is for vacant social housing. It sounded to me like a blame game. Even if I accept some local authorities are better than others, the fact is many local authorities, including Offaly County Council, are understaffed. Reductions in staff numbers were made many years ago and they have never reached the same level since. We should be collaborating, working together and supporting our local authorities to tackle this issue.

See this speech in context