Michelle Mulherin (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and compliment him on his vigour and determination in addressing the problem of housing and homelessness in this country, as evidenced by the launch of Rebuilding Ireland - Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness. I wish to focus on pillars 2 and 5, particularly in the context of existing housing stock. Pillar 2 focuses on the accelerated social housing objective and pillar 5 on the utilisation of existing housing.

I am very familiar with the housing issues in my own county of Mayo. The latest available figures show that 24% of the 65,000 units in the county are empty. At the same time, Mayo County Council has a housing list of 1,600. A survey was conducted by the Department in 2010. Inspectors who had previously been involved in inspections related to the first time buyer's grant went from house to house in Mayo and found that one quarter of the units were empty. We are in the same place right now. Recent census figures show that little has changed in six years. There is a fundamental problem there that the market is not addressing.

The empty housing stock in Mayo comprises both empty and half finished units. Approximately 1,500 of the empty units are at various stages of construction. Clearly these units need to be completed and occupied. There are 1,600 people on the housing list in Mayo and 1,500 semi-complete units. A focus on getting the existing housing stock occupied will go a long way towards addressing the housing needs of people in the county. Such a focus will also address the problem of dereliction and unfinished houses and estates. This should be done alongside the planned investment in new social housing.

The big questions are why these units have remained empty for the past six years or more and what can be done about it. Ordinary market forces are not addressing this issue. While I welcome the two new schemes announced by the Minister recently, namely, the repair and lease scheme and the buy and renew scheme, I am not sure how they will work. We need to get more houses in public ownership, that is, in the ownership of the local authority rather than approved housing bodies. It is not very attractive at the moment to be a landlord. It is very onerous, involving a lot of red tape, the payment of PRSI and so forth. The tax treatment of landlords is very different to PAYE workers, for example, and a lot of people, quite simply, do not want the bother. We know that there are ceilings on rent and we know the reasons for that but it is not attractive to be a landlord. The Minister has set aside more funding for the repair and lease scheme than for the buy and renew scheme. However, in Mayo, the buy and renew scheme is more appropriate and sensible.

We need to work out how we are going to get these empty units occupied, either by buying them or giving people grants to renovate them. We need to go about this in a systematic way, as was done in 2010. Inspectors must go around the county, door to door. In many cases, people do not know why units are empty. It might be that an older person has died and the house has been left empty because of issues relating to the deceased person's estate. It might be the case that builders have problems with banks or with NAMA and do not know where things stand. We must get to the bottom of this so that we can find the people with the decision making power. It is surely the case that people do not want to have properties empty when we have a homelessness and housing shortage problem.

The banks are very quick to sell houses and mortgages to vulture funds. Why are they not being required to approach local authorities first to offer them empty units? The banks should be forced to approach local authorities, tell them what units are available, what the situation is with regard to the debt and to sort things out. There are issues with regard to title in many cases, particularly with older houses.Traditionally, local authorities had the power to correct difficulties with the legal title to a property. All these issues need to be examined. We must start knocking on doors, and if inspectors are not available as they were before, we should mandate local authority officers, clerks or technicians to do it. Resource the local authorities to do it. Then we would really get to grips with the empty houses. Will the Minister take this on board? These are very real experiences in Mayo. It would make a world of difference to the 1,600 people and families on the housing list. It would go a major way towards sorting out our problem with dealing with existing housing stock in a very practical way.