Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)

I follow my colleagues in saying that the Government’s continued lack of urgency in dealing with the housing disaster - our most serious and seemingly intractable challenge - has been exposed again by the introduction by Fine Gael of this amendment. This Bill, which addresses dereliction and vacancy, should not be allowed to be delayed any longer. Dereliction and vacancy are twin scourges that blight our cities, towns and villages and, without exaggeration, are leading to the deaths of communities.

Vacancy and dereliction hollow out our towns and villages. They cause particular issues where there are not sufficient new houses being built to replace them. In towns and villages, including in the Gaeltacht, people are crying out for housing while landowners are hoarding sites suitable for development and owners of derelict buildings are getting away scot-free. Derelict buildings not only deface our landscapes and streetscapes and undermine communities and counties such as Sligo, Leitrim and Donegal, but they also contribute to the homeless crisis and the chronic and systematic housing shortages we endure and will continue to endure as long as Government parties continue to block efforts, such as this Bill, that could address this crisis.

The 2024 crisis showed that there were 163,433 homes vacant or derelict and that 48,000 had been vacant since 2016. We all welcome, of course, advancements made under the vacant and derelict refurbishment grant schemes in recent years, but the numbers show that more needs to be done. In April, the Minister, Deputy Browne, announced that 2,000 have been brought back into use since the scheme was launched in 2022 and we are delighted. Well done on those 2,000 homes. Now there are only another 161,000 to go. To bring back home the scale of the problem, this is about 8% of national housing stock. The vacant and derelict grants work well for a certain portion of people and a certain portion of properties. They are not perfect – no scheme is – so let us see what we can do to bring the other 161,000 back into use and what we can do to bring hoarded land into play for development. I refer to developments such as the Mill apartments in Ballisodare, just ten minutes from Sligo town, where 60 to 80 apartments were abandoned unfinished when the Celtic tiger's roars turned into a death rattle. Substantial premises on the main street in Bundoran and on the approaches into Ballyshannon are abandoned and derelict, not just for years but for decades. This story is repeated in every town and every village right across the country.

Regarding the development of empty spaces within urban centres, the layout of many of our towns and villages evolved or was planned more than 100 or 150 years ago. They met the needs of a population that no longer exists and their layout, which may have made sense at the time, no longer serves a functioning purpose. They are, as we could see today in the briefing Senator Noonan organised, often hidden from the eyes of the public. Large parts of the towns are often redundant. For instance, in Sligo town, behind one of our main streets is High Street, a street itself that no longer fulfils the function usually associated with that name and features substantial portions of abandoned and derelict and abandoned properties. In fact, the dereliction became so bad that a large section consisting of five substantial terraced properties had to be demolished with urgency last June when it began to collapse. These buildings have been unoccupied and a blight for many years. Behind this building on High Street, there is a vast area of 1.9 ha, which goes to meet Old Market Street, forming a rough triangle with Castle Street and Teeling Street. Presumably, this would have previously contained large yards necessary to the trades that went on at the time and are no longer required. This is just one of 14 regeneration sites proposed for Sligo town in the 2024 to 2030 county development plan, which in total takes in 32.3 ha.

I could go on and on about Sligo, but I would love to see exclusions from development. There is one part of the Bill I want to talk about. I would love to see exclusions from development of land that is being actively farmed within towns and village boundaries or which is being used for leisure and community activities. When we see brownfield sites such as 80 ha available within Sligo town, we see that we do not need to go further on our precious green spaces.

I will quickly address the vacant homes tax. I would like to see the Department of housing and local government account for the failure of local authorities, like what has been said here before, to collect the vacant homes charge. I question whether the vacant homes charge, which is supposed to be levelled at five times the rate of the property tax, is actually being collected at all currently, and I urge the Department to address this. If we could have another discussion on this, I would also like to question whether there is a need to exclude holiday homes.

I would welcome a discussion on those two aspects of the Bill, but other than that, I am delighted to be supporting and seconding it.