Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am allowed to fight back. The funding for housing is available because of the jobs recovery and that is the way it works. The funding is available for other areas as well but it can only continue to fund them if we have people in jobs. The best way out of poverty for anybody is to have a job if at all possible and that is what we are trying to do. We are helping people to get a job. Senator Gavan should not tell me they are tax breaks for the rich because they are not. If he analysed the budget, he would see that it is jobs-focused and that is what budgets have been about for five or six years, which has worked quite well.

People keep referring to the number of vacant properties. There are more than 200,000 such properties in the preliminary census. If someone read the last three censuses before that, they would see that it was always the same. There have been more than 200,000 vacant properties in this country over the past ten or 15 years. We are now putting in place strategies to try to deal with and activate them. Even when these properties were worth a fortune and when there was a shortage of houses back in 2002, 2003 and 2004 and people were paying massive money for houses, they were still vacant so it is not as simple as saying that we will compulsorily purchase them. The reasons they are vacant are complicated in many cases. We have asked the Housing Agency to bring forward a national housing reuse strategy that will be available in quarter two of this year to see how we can tackle all these vacant properties bit by bit and through different schemes and initiatives. This will involve looking at taxing them and compulsory purchase and will look at what is happening in other countries because we are prepared to do whatever it takes.

In the meantime, we announced a few schemes to get a move on while we are awaiting that overall report. The repair and lease initiative and the purchasing initiative will help deliver a few thousand houses over the years ahead. If they work and we spend all the money, we will do more because that repair and lease initiative is one of the best schemes we have. Let us see whether we can spend what we have first. If it is utilised, we can reallocate money to different circles within our schemes. It is not for lack of ambition. Again, it is practical. We will see what comes in with an available scheme. We are asking local authorities to knock on doors and push this scheme. If there is a house in Carlow, Navan, Cork, Dublin or Limerick that is sitting empty - I am very conscious that fewer than 1,000 people live in Limerick city centre - it is a crazy situation. There is a scheme that can make it happen but let us see. If it works, people drive it and everybody here encourages it, we will find more money for it but we must open up the scheme and see what happens. I see endless potential in it because there is a lot of vacant property, which is crazy when people need homes. We will do all we can to bring the two together but it is a combination of carrot and stick.

I know people advocate levies on vacant properties. That is all very fine and we will probably end up looking at that but there is a lead-in time to that. It was the same with the vacant site levy. According to legal advice from the Attorney General, it could not be implemented until January 2019. Work has begun on it but it cannot kick in until 2019. We cannot sit back and wait that long. We must do other things to try to activate these sites and houses and that is what the carrot approach is about. When people tell me that they own a property on a high street that needs €30,000 or €40,000 to do it up but they cannot find that money, we now have a scheme that provides that funding. The State will invest in that person's property but it wants it back as social housing for ten years. It is a fair scheme and good value for taxpayers' money and I hope it works. I hope we are in here looking for more money for it. I expect we will be and rightly so because it is one of the initiatives that will help.

The Housing Agency is dealing with issues with purchasing vacant properties. It has looked at about 900 houses and about 330 houses have been priced. About 238 houses are sale agreed and these houses will be passed on to the approved housing bodies. The Housing Agency can then spend the money again so it is a revolving budget. The agency buys the houses, secures them, sells them on and can buy more. It has €70 million to work with and has the potential to deliver 1,600 plus units. Again, it can do a lot more. The agency is very conscious that it cannot compete with other first-time buyers so it is trying to find vacant properties or other properties that fit with what we need but not compete in the market. It is about finding houses that do not cause a problem.The agency is dealing with the lending issues in order to try to buy in volume as well. If that works and if it gives good value for taxpayers' money, we will do more of it. We are trying these schemes to make it happen.

I have gone on too long. I hope that I have answered most of the questions. The Senator might not like all of the answers, but that is fine. If these schemes for vacant properties work, we will do more. The overall vacant houses strategy will be published, probably in the next six or seven weeks. That will give us more ideas and more initiatives to try to help.

Senator Kelleher asked a range of questions and if I miss any of them, I will come back with proper answers. My understanding is that the rough sleeper count is a national count and is not restricted to Dublin. It happens every six months, I think in November and July. Those responsible were very close to having accommodation for every rough sleeper. People do not have to sleep rough. That does not mean they have exactly what they want or that they can avail of it when it is needed. That is what we have to work on, to make it easier to access or to close that gap. Certainly, in Dublin city, we sat down in October with all the various NGO agencies, which do great work - Senator Kelleher is involved with some of them - and we asked them, from their figures, what additional accommodation they thought was needed. That would have been last September or October. At the time, they suggested that perhaps 140 or 160 additional bed spaces were required. The Minister and the Department decided to go beyond that and an additional 210 spaces were provided. A total of €6 million was spent in the months of October, November and December to bring forward that accommodation. Those beds have been provided. There is a commitment to do more again this spring and to go beyond what we think we need, just to be sure. We are doing that and whatever is needed we will do. There is money secured for that and it will be spent.

The Senator asked do we have enough? I have just seen the figures for a couple of weeks around December-January and there were some nights were there were 100 vacant beds in emergency accommodation. Some nights there were 20, some nights 30 or 40, but most nights, that I could see, there were vacant emergency beds. I want to stress again that this is only temporary - we want to get them homes - but the Senator asked specifically about rough sleepers. The beds are there. We are enhancing the quality of those beds. I visited a lot of them during the month of January. The newer ones are much better than the existing ones, there is no doubt about that. We are enhancing what we are doing and providing a better quality of accommodation to allow for couples and families as well. We are quite close to having enough but that does not mean that there will not be rough sleepers.