Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)

I have spoken before about being involved in housing and homelessness for many years. I have campaigned for housing wherever we could get it. Back in 2016, I was asked to address the Oireachtas joint housing and homelessness committee, as it was called at the time. I was told by the then Minister, Simon Coveney, that homelessness would be eradicated by 2020. Since then, the numbers have tripled. Any measure that is going to improve housing in Ireland is greatly welcome. The Dereliction and Building Regeneration Bill 2025 is a crucial step. It is a success that I want to see happen but it is dependent on realistic timelines, adequate funding and the capacity within Departments to make it happen at local authority level also.

If the Government listens to those on the ground, in local towns, etc., and sets fair, workable standards for people to reach, the kind of urban renewal that my colleagues are putting forward in this Bill is realistic and communities will benefit. A friend of mine recently bought a house in north Dublin, in East Wall. He emailed the vacant property grant section in October 2023 to check that the derelict house he bought would be eligible for the dereliction grant. He received an email reply six days later which stated that, unfortunately, the section cannot deal with specifics and asked him to please have a look at the website. It took nine months and it was passed by five different people within the Department. Each time, those five officials asked for the same documents. It seems that there is no joined-up thinking in this regard. The grant was finally given in July 2024 but, by then, the builder my friend had secured had moved on, the costs of doing the building had gone up and the project therefore became more expensive or perhaps unworkable. I do not think he was unlucky. It is more that he collided with a system that is not working. The press release for the derelict and vacant homes grant is fantastic but the plumbing behind it is not intact. By the end of 2023, the vacant property grant boasted 6,300 applications. Of those, almost 50% were approved, yet at the end of 2023 only 127 payments had been made. That equates to one drawdown for every 50 applications. This means the local authorities were given €30 million but only released €6 million of that. Now, I will say that, as of 28 April 2025, the figures had improved, with 12,400 applications and 8,600 approvals. However, there had only been 2,096 payments. It seems that the system is working but it is not working fast enough. Three quarters of the approved projects are still waiting for the money. Every stalled file is a roof over the heads of, let us say, two people. That is approximately 13,000 people who are still without their home because this grant is not being administered properly.

Another issue with this grant is that it is only paid after the work is done. Not only do the individuals have to buy the house, they then have to frontload the expenditure. My issue here relates to the staffing of the local authority units that deal with vacant properties. It seems to be a single engineer and an administrator and it is just not enough to get the grants through. As I mentioned, someone having to go through five officials means that there is poor communication and the system, in that case, is just not working.

The cost for this grant is not just measured in delays, but also in extra rent and a loss of public trust. Therefore, when I hear of a new Bill, I welcome it. When I hear of new housing initiatives, I welcome them but all I can hear in the back of my head is, "One in 50 is getting paid". We need to improve on getting the grants over the line. Let us turn this into a good news story.