Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
Link to this: Individually | In context

12. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if his Department has any plans to investigate the rate of home vacancy around the country; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [65819/25]

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
Link to this: Individually | In context

I draw the Minister's attention to a number of vacant homes in Ringfort housing estate in Rathmolyon, County Meath. The families concerned did everything right. They paid their deposits, spending tens of thousands of euro, but the builder has refused them their homes. They have been put under massive stress, with some of them putting off starting a family and some having to move back into their parents' home. After all of that, five years later, they are being refused their homes. What can the Minister do to enable these families to move into their homes?

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

The Deputy's question was about plans to investigate the rate of home vacancy around the country, and that is the question I will answer. Data on vacant properties is available from a number of sources, such as the Central Statistics Office, data from census 2022 and GeoDirectory. My Department has been engaging with the national statistical institute, the Central Statistics Office, which has recently developed a new statistical release on residential vacancy. The release, published in September, provides information on the extent of residential vacancy in 2022 and 2023, using ESB data on residential electricity consumption, with future regular publications planned. In the release, the CSO notes a national vacancy rate of 3.3% at the end of 2023, down from 3.6% at the end of 2022. Local authority and local electoral level breakdowns are also included. Similarly, the latest GeoDirectory Residential Buildings Report, for quarter 2 of 2025, recorded that the average vacancy rate across Ireland had dropped to 3.7%, which is the lowest rate recorded since 2013.

The Government has introduced a range of initiatives and funding mechanisms in recent years and these measures are proving successful in reducing the levels of vacancy and dereliction nationwide. One such measure, the compulsory purchase orders, CPO, activation programme launched in April 2023, requires a proactive and systematic approach by local authorities to identifying vacant and derelict properties and engaging with owners to bring those properties back into use. This includes the active use of compulsory purchase powers by local authorities. As part of this programme, almost all local authorities now have a database of vacant and derelict properties identified within settlements in their administrative area that can be used to engage with property owners. The Government's commitment to addressing vacancy and dereliction, and actions in the new housing plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities, will continue to play a vital role in bringing these properties into use as new homes across the country.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
Link to this: Individually | In context

I accept the question I am asking the Minister is tangential to the one on the questions paper. I urge him to go off script for the next couple of minutes to address it. We have a situation where houses that were built are vacant. At the heart of this particular problem is that there are two separate companies with the same owners and directors. One company has bought the debt of another company, giving it secured creditor status. This means many other creditors will receive nothing, including these families, and the houses will remain vacant for now. The families are waiting to move into their homes, which are vacant. There is nothing they can do to get what they are entitled to. There is no mechanism on the part of the Government to get them into their homes. It frustrates me because Home Building Finance Ireland, HBFI, had the initial loan that was given to the builder. It allowed that loan to be bought out, which enabled the particular builder to become a secured creditor and be in charge of the liquidation process. These families are now left with nothing. Will the Minister address this matter?

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

I accept that these people are in an extraordinarily difficult situation, which I have no doubt is quite traumatic for them. As the Deputy knows, this matter is now going through a legal process.

I cannot comment on individual cases but in any situation, we always have to look at what is happening, take learnings from it and see if there are ways we could strengthen our laws, be it within the Department of housing or a different Department, as the case may be, and see how we can reassure ordinary people who are not expecting to find themselves dealing with liquidation and these types of scenarios, and they are quite complicated legal scenarios. I am very much aware of what those families are going through and I cannot begin to imagine the stress they are all going through.

As I said, I have to be careful about not commenting too much on a particular situation going through a legal process, but we do have to look at those situations and ensure we take learnings from them.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
Link to this: Individually | In context

I appreciate that and I am not going to comment on the insolvency process happening at present, other than to say the State is now on the hook for €700,000 because Revenue is one of those creditors. There are tools the State can use to protect its own interests in this, such as the office of corporate enforcement, which can take a High Court challenge to a liquidator that has been selected. Revenue itself can do the same.

It is really unfortunate we have a situation that could well be replicated over and over again in the future. There are plenty of construction companies dealing with the inflating costs of building that could find themselves in difficulty. We need to make sure individuals who put deposits down have those deposits ring-fenced in some manner, maybe in an escrow for example, to prevent them losing that, but also that the contracts are fulfilled. Here is the key: two separate companies with the same directors and owners are using the corporate veil to separate their assets from their liabilities. We have seen it before in the likes of Clerys, Paris Bakery and other situations. We need a mechanism to ensure people are held responsible for what they owe people with these things.

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

What has happened with these families in a situation of a liquidation process is that there is a ranking of priority within that and they have found themselves very much on the wrong end of it. What I can undertake, albeit not in this specific case because, as I said, it is going through a current legal process, and with the principles being realised out of this situation, I will speak to the Ministers for Finance and enterprise to see how we can look at the particular situation that has arisen here. The Deputy is right; this situation could happen again in the future, so I will undertake to do that.