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

I am very conscious of that.

We are really trying to focus on vacant properties and I would point out to Senators McFadden, Byrne and others that there is a range of schemes in place in that regard. The repair and lease back scheme had a very poor uptake, which was very disappointing. I thought that scheme was well designed and that it could have been a great success. We have made changes to it to make it more attractive, including reducing the length of time to which property owners had to commit, which was a minimum of ten years. Some property owners felt that they could make more money in other ways and good luck to them. Others felt that the housing was in the wrong area. Only nine or ten have fully come through the system but there are approximately 800 applications in the system at the moment that are being assessed.The new scheme will work better and deliver that because it is major plus. It will help to bring vacant properties back into use. The scheme was designed for people who have vacant properties but no cash to do them up. Once people had committed to making properties available for social housing, they could have up to €40,000 spent on each property. In most cases, only €20,000 was needed. Some people do not have the cash, but others do. Those who have the cash will do their own work. We would like to encourage them to come back into the system. This scheme is there for that. It is also specifically designed to help those who own units located over shops on high streets and elsewhere. It is an ideal scheme.

I agree that local authorities have not had the time or resources to push the scheme. The Minister, Deputy Murphy, and I have asked them to push it hard. I ask every political party to push it hard to all local authorities because it is a no-brainer, yet the uptake is too low.

We recently made exemptions to the planning code for properties which are vacant or are located over shop units, which includes office accommodation or shop fronts. We have made it easier to turn such properties back into housing without planning permission or contribution levies. We are working with the sector to bring those properties back into use because we want that to happen, as does everybody here. It is not true to say that there are 200,000 vacant properties; the figure is a lot less. We want to bring those properties which are vacant back into use as quickly as we possibly can.