Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy. I can see his passion. The Minister and the Department want to move to a planned maintenance programme, away from legacy. We want to bring all those units and homes up to a state of repair. The focus from now on will be about a model for planned maintenance such that houses can be re-let promptly, but ongoing works are being done to homes in order that when they become vacant, they are then in a reasonably good state and only a modest amount of work has to be done to re-let them. The Deputy will accept that one of the key problems is the length of time it takes local authorities to turn around voids to re-let them.

The model is moving and I think the Deputy and I are on the same page on that. I expect it is something he would support. It is towards a planned maintenance model rather than a model that is just reactive when properties become vacant. We want to move to planned maintenance. The local authorities are doing surveys of all their stock to get to that point and that is a key body of work the local authorities are returning to the Department.

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