Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)

Right across cities, towns and villages, there are empty, vacant, and derelict houses and buildings lying idle. They are being left to rot. These are properties and homes where people should be able to live, work and raise families, but instead they are left derelict and vacant. GeoDirectory has found record levels of commercial vacancy. It has also found that only 2,377 homes have been charged with the vacant homes tax. There are probably two or three times more than that in Cork city alone. This is a shockingly low figure. Why is more not being done to tackle vacancy and dereliction? These empty buildings are ripping the heart out of communities in our cities, towns and villages. They are destroying local economies and forcing people to live in overcrowded, substandard accommodation and in many cases emergency accommodation.

More than 5,000 children are in emergency accommodation and at the same time, we have vacant, derelict buildings in every town, city and village. It is madness. What is being done about it? I will give a couple of ideas to show what I am talking about. I have a printed image of a street in Cork. It has been like that for years. It is not just Cork. I have an image of Crumlin village. What could be a lovely house with an extension on it has been boarded up. It is not just that. I have an image of Dublin city centre. A block of houses has been left boarded up to rot while there is a huge waiting list in Dublin for the many people in homeless accommodation. People cannot rent or buy. It is not just here. A massive building in County Kerry is vacant and derelict. I have an image of another in Buncrana, County Donegal. I also have an image of a vacant building in Sligo. In every town and every village, we have boarded-up properties.

What is the Government doing about it?

We do not know whether these buildings are on the derelict sites levy. Even though the data was collected in quarter 2, and I have looked for it at least ten if not 12 times, I cannot get an answer from the Minister. Will the Minister of State commit to responding to me and to releasing the data in relation to derelict sites levies? Are the levies being charged? How many sites are on the levies? What local authorities are either putting sites on or charging the levies? There is information that needs to be delivered. Will the Minister of State commit to releasing that data? To be honest, it looks like to me that a cover-up is going on around dereliction.

We know from previous years that local authorities are underfunded, understaffed and under-resourced. If we want local authorities to deal with this, the Government must support them. I propose that the derelict sites levy be taken off local authorities and given to Revenue because the one thing we know is if Revenue is given the job, it will do that job. What we have at the moment are land hoarders. They do not have to pay the local property tax because the property is derelict. They will not pay the derelict sites levy because local authorities do not have the staff to enforce it. What is happening? Will the Minister of State release the derelict sites data? Will he look at moving the collection of it to the Revenue Commissioners?

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