Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to discuss the housing plan launched yesterday. It is ambitious. I have not read it in detail, but I have looked through it. I also listened to some of the debate in the other House yesterday. To achieve anything, it is necessary to have a plan which we now have.It is a blueprint that everyone needs to row in behind and push. I have concerns and a number of suggestions, but I welcome this initiative.

We are in a crisis. According to the recent census figures, the number of housing units nationally increased by 18,981, bringing the housing stock to 2.02 million. In the same period, the population grew by 169,700 to 4.756 million. Such metrics lead to our skewed housing provision. Many commentators, including the Housing Agency and its chief executive, who is someone for whom I have the utmost respect, have written and spoken about this. The published plan will go some way towards meeting the challenges.

Many Members have referred to housing output, be it private or social. Both outputs fell off a cliff after the 2010 EU-IMF package. Output levels were at approximately 80,000 units in 2007, dropped to 40,000 or 50,000 and then fell off a cliff, ending up with a national housing output of 10,000 or so. While I welcome the plan's ambitious targets, are they achievable and measurable? They are time-bound. How will we achieve the objectives required to deliver the plan? I have some concerns in this regard, as most people do. I am sure that the Minister does as well, since he must deliver on the plan. The new housing office within his Department must be well resourced and have the necessary expertise, communication channels, be they open channels or back channels to local authorities, and every delivery vehicle available to it. Legislation accompanying the plan will need to be introduced, so it is important that that happen forthwith.

Something that struck me about the recent census figures was the number of vacant properties around the country. Of the approximately 260,000 such properties, some 61,000 are holiday homes for people living in Ireland or abroad. There are many vacant properties up and down the country. I examined my parish last weekend. It has many vacant properties where, for example, a grandparent, aunt or someone died and left the property to family members, it fell into a state of disrepair and then became uninhabitable. We do not know how many such houses there are. There are no data to suggest that they number over 100,000, but neither are there data to suggest the contrary.

The Housing Agency compiled a good report on this matter recently. It used the 2011 census figures, but it made a number of suggestions with which I concur. According to the latest census figures, there are 16,321 vacant apartments and 7,795 vacant houses in Dublin at a time when 6,000 people are officially homeless, including 2,000 children, and 130,000 people are on the social housing list. The Housing Agency made a number of suggestions that merit consideration and are not covered by this report. For example, it recommended a two-year timeframe for identifying the number of vacant properties with a view to enabling a strategy or template on vacant housing, the empowerment of local authorities to carry out this research locally and an examination of a scheme to bring those properties into productive use. I suggest that we consider schemes that have been introduced in other countries, such as grant aiding people to bring properties into productive use and allowing them to rent the properties out or lease them long term to local authorities. Since that would be prohibited by our current tax regime for landlords, this matter needs to be examined, as it has not been identified in the report. Some 130,000 people are on housing waiting lists, but what is there to say that there are not 130,000 vacant housing units owned by individuals who would lease or sell them were they brought into a state of repair?