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

Of the 1,000 properties inspected, 61 are what we would consider to be truly vacant homes, which Mayo County Council believes it can bring back into liveable stock. It will engage and do that now, which is important. The council has also received 80 prepare and lease applications. That is another 80 vacant homes it can bring back into use, which is separate from the applications it received under buy and renew. Of its own vacant social housing stock, 320 vacant homes requiring the investment of serious money, have been brought back into its stock of social housing. There are now 57 homes vacant under the voids programme in Mayo County Council. We will work on a plan for an application for funding for 32 of those homes to bring them back into use with that funding this year. Good progress has been made, although more needs to be done.

I thank Mayo County Council for setting up the website vacanthomes.ie. It is doing the heavy lifting for the rest of country in allowing members of the public to identify vacant homes on their roads wherever they are based in the county. That information is submitted. People can take a picture of the home on their mobile phone, and it is geo-co-ordinated with the global positioning system, GPS. People will know where the property is and can visually inspect it. This applies to each of the local authorities throughout the country, and they can then determine whether it can bring such properties into their programme, be it under the repair and lease, the buy and renew, compulsory purchase order, CPO, or another measure. Mayo County Council has developed a very helpful tool and I was very happy to see it do that. Not long after I came into this brief, it stepped forward and it has been leading the way since and I thank it for that.