James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy can have his spin and his guff - that is fine - but the reality is that we are taking very real action to challenge derelict sites across this country. They are a blight and they are antisocial behaviour. There is no more powerful statement to say we are tackling it than bringing in the Revenue Commissioners to ensure that anybody with a derelict property is going to face very real and serious charges. We have the 7% but the problem is that it is not being applied to derelict sites by local authorities across the country. I accept there are local authorities that are under pressure for staffing.

That is not a criticism of local authorities although you can see the significant variation between different local authorities and they are making their own priorities in terms of what they are doing. From my perspective this is a serious statement.

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