Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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13. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the funding allocated to local authorities to bring vacant properties back into public use for social housing; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [65437/25]

Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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Will the Minister update the Dáil on the funding allocated to local authorities to bring the thousands of vacant properties back into public use for social housing, and will he make a statement on the matter?

Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The management and maintenance of local authority social homes, including pre-letting repairs to vacant properties, implementing a planned maintenance programme and carrying out responsive repairs are matters for each individual local authority under section 58 of the Housing Act 1966. Local authorities are also statutorily required to ensure all their tenanted homes comply with the Housing (Standards for Rented Houses) Regulations 2019. Notwithstanding these obligations, my Department provides annual funding under the planned maintenance and voids programme to support local authority management and maintenance programmes.

Since 2014 to the end of 2024, over 25,600 vacant social homes were brought back into productive use through an investment of more than €361 million. Some €31 million will be provided in 2025, supporting the refurbishment and re-letting of a minimum of 1,900 social homes, facilitating the quick turnaround of vacant homes and continuing the transition from a reactive voids approach to a planned maintenance approach. Funding will further increase in 2026 and, under a revised voids programme, will focus on the prompt turnaround of casual vacancies and reductions in the level of overall vacancy in the local authority housing stock, while also contributing to stock conditions surveys and supporting works arising from these surveys. This funding should complement local authorities' own resources, and should not be viewed as a substitute for local authority funding or for the requirement for adequate budgeting for housing management and maintenance by local authority officials and elected members as part of their annual budgetary process.

Data on delivery under the 2025 planned maintenance and voids programme, and local authority allocations for 2026, will be available early next year. It is my intention to introduce a new voids programme with a renewed focus on prompt turnaround and re-letting of vacant units by focusing only on those works necessary to ensure compliance with the Housing (Standards for Rented Houses) Regulations 2019.

Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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Can I give the Minister of State a bit of advice and provide him with a solution? I sincerely want the Government to take this on board. He has just said the voids programme will be open in the new year. Why is it not open today? Why is the voids programme not open 365 days a year so that when a house comes back, the local authority can fix it up and allocate it out? Opening it just once or twice a year does not make sense. I am trying to be constructive but the Government always criticises us and says there is nothing coming from the Opposition. This is a simple fix here: keep the void programme open for 365 days a year so that houses are not left to rot.

Can I give the Minister of State one statistic? Data I received earlier this year from local authorities showed that one in four vacant houses is idle longer than 12 months. If we open the voids programme all year long, that will stop. We could get a fix here today. We could agree on this. We are trying to be cross-party constructive and that is something we could do together that would make a real difference to social housing and people on the housing list.

Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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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.

Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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I am not sure if the Minister of State knows this, but he should. If someone is not telling him this, he should get into the Department tomorrow and ask the question. He talks about preventative maintenance. At the current rate of preventative maintenance, it will take 78 years to do the stock survey of all local authority housing. That is the figure the Government provided to me - 78 years - and he comes in here to answer the question saying this is what the Government has planned. There are people who are living in mouldy, damp houses with leaks in the roof and windows and front doors that are unfit. People have heating systems that are not up to standard and the Minister of State comes in here talking about preventative maintenance. The Department cannot even do the audit. If it cannot do the audit and does not have the information, how is it going to do the maintenance?

Does the Minister of State know how much was allocated for preventative maintenance? It was €67 per house for each local authority. Each local authority is to have €67 to calculate what preventative maintenance needs to be done. Does the Minister of State really think that is going to do the job? I am asking him a straight yes-no question. I am telling him it will not.

Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I have a couple of figures for the Deputy. A sum of €31 million is being given in 2025 towards voids and planned maintenance. It will be €40 million for next year, 2026. Furthermore, the intention is that local authorities will have these stock surveys done over the next four to five years.

Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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I got the figures from the Department.

Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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We have to be ambitious about getting these surveys completed.

Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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These are the facts.

Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Ultimately, the key point is that there are two areas here. Number one, the local authority itself has rental income coming in, which is ring-fenced in terms of maintenance for its housing stock. Furthermore, the Department gives additional funding in that regard as well. But we have to move. Everyone talks about future-proofing and coming up with a model that will work into the future. I think the Deputy would accept that we need to get to a space where we have a plan maintenance rolling model rather than a model on voids alone.