James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)

The move to the planned maintenance approach for stock management and maintenance is crucial in this regard to ensure that local authorities can maximise the funding available from relevant stock improvement programmes by only completing the measures applicable with the housing standards for rented housing regulations when a property becomes vacant. Providing cyclical maintenance over the life cycle of a tenancy will ensure houses can be re-let more quickly, deliver far better value for money and limit the exposure of the local authority to excessive costs and significant turnaround times when a property becomes vacant.

The motion from Sinn Féin tabled for this evening's debate does not fairly represent the efforts and progress the Government has made and is making. It makes the point that we need to create a dedicated Department of housing with annual multi-euro maintenance funding, starting in budget 2026, but this is already in place and is further supported by the housing delivery co-ordination office. Some €90 million is available for the energy efficiency retrofit programme, which is an increase of almost 40% since the programme was implemented in 2021. Some €50 million is available in 2025 for a regeneration programme. Some €31 million is available under the planned maintenance voids, with over €10 million of that funding ring-fenced. The disabled persons grant for local authority housing is receiving a budget of €25 million to support improvement works and additionality for existing local authority-owned dwellings in the form of adaptations and extensions, which allow people to live in their communities for as long as possible.

The motion refers to the failure to properly fund and maintain homes and the failure to remove the cap associated with the costs of remediation for vacant units. As explained, there is no cap-----

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