Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On advertising, local authorities have budgets for advertising. If a particular local authority is having difficulty making money available to advertise available schemes, we can absolutely support it. To look at Westmeath County Council and its own vacancy statistics, as the Senator pointed out the CSO said that the vacancy rate in 2016 was 10%. In 2018 GeoDirectory showed us that it might have been closer to 3.6%. The information I have received from the local authority tells us that it is lower again. This brings us back to the point that this area is not the low-hanging fruit we thought it was. Nevertheless, we still have to pursue it because, while it might not yield as many homes as we thought it might, they are homes in the right areas. They are homes in the centre of our towns and villages. That is what we want to get after.

We have Westmeath County Council's vacant homes action plan and the council has mapped the potential vacant homes identified on GeoDirectory and vacanthomes.ie, removing duplicate entries. It has also mapped the CSO vacant homes data and done colour-coding in that respect. I will show the Senator those maps if she would like to take a look at them. The vacant homes officer is in place and is using this mapped data systematically to identify potentially vacant homes. Once vacant homes are identified they are inspected and, where appropriate, the process of identifying ownership, engaging with the owner, and establishing the potential to reactivate and recover these vacant homes commences. Additional funding of €100,000 was provided to Westmeath over 2018 and 2019 for the vacant homes office.

To the end of last year, 176 homes were identified as vacant and inspected. Of these homes, 108 were confirmed as vacant while 68 were occupied. Again we are getting into the data and seeing the true level of vacancy. Details of ownership were identified for 13 of the vacant homes. It can be difficult to identify ownership. The council has had positive engagement with the owners of nine of these properties and the owners have indicated their potential willingness to consider either the repair and lease scheme or the buy and renew scheme. In addition, one further property has now been identified for a CPO. As part of the work it is doing, the council is in discussion with a number of local estate agents to identify properties that are vacant and that could be recovered as part of this scheme. The officer is in place and working. Funding has been made available to the officer. The mapping has been done and the officer's plan has been given to the Department. The officer is now pursuing those properties but, of the 176 that have been identified and inspected, 68 were occupied. The officer is pursuing the others and CPO processes are under way.