John O'Mahony (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy English.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I thank the Minister of State, Deputy English, for coming to the House to deal with the issue of voids. As I am conscious that he is very much on top of this whole area, I will not go into great detail. The task under the Rebuilding Ireland policy is to deliver on the social housing targets that have been set down by the Department, in agreement with all 31 local authorities, to address a number of issues with housing delivery and supply.The Minister of State has said this before, he will say it again and I would agree with him on the point that there is no single quick fix to our housing problems. There are horses for courses, there are different parts of the country and there are different sets of circumstances to be taken into account. Many interventions and many opportunities have to be looked at and seized.

I am a member of the Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government and through Rebuilding Ireland we identified, along with the Government, that there are a number of ways we will address the delivery of housing, namely, through new builds, addressing voids, acquisition, leasing, the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, the housing assistance payment, HAP, and a number of other interventions. I am particularly focusing on voids today because I am not convinced that certain targets have been delivered in addressing voids and the Minister of State will know that is the case. The issue of voids is a bit complex and it addresses issues with the ongoing inspections of social housing stock, which is an important asset for any local authority and an important State asset. We have learned a lot of lessons from how we have managed our housing stock in the past.

I am asking the Minister of State to address the issue of the 31 local authorities and the inclusion in the programme for 2019. What are the allocations from the Department in 2019 to address the voids?

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Senator for raising this issue and the issue of housing in general and for keeping the focus on Rebuilding Ireland and the targets set therein. He is right to say that no single scheme will solve this issue. It will be a number of schemes and we have to keep pushing them and adding to them. We must look at the different opportunities presented in different local authorities in different ways.

When it comes to tackling vacancies, we need to do more. From a social housing point of view, I am happy that we are making great improvements with local authority housing vacancies. However, there are still many private dwellings being left vacant. The local authorities need to take the lead on this to bring them back into use, using all the different schemes such as the repair and leasing scheme and the buy and renew scheme. They can also use a combination of schemes to address voids and they can use funding from Project Ireland 2040 to so do. Local authorities have to lead and drive this effort but I ask Senators, local authority members and everybody else to support that work, to drive it on and to communicate to the people who own these empty buildings that there are a number of schemes funded by the taxpayer that provide solutions to people who own private homes. There is a fear factor that it could be complicated or there could be red tape but there is not. We are trying to reduce all that as well, so there is an opportunity for people who own private properties to bring them back into use. That might also be flagged out of today's conversation.

On the social housing voids programme, which is the local authority housing we own, my Department provides Exchequer funding to support local authorities in the refurbishment of social housing homes that, for a range of reasons, require a significant level of investment before they can be re-let. Ordinarily, responsibility for the management and maintenance of local authority housing stock lies with local authorities themselves, in line with the Housing Acts.

We know that vacancies arise on a daily basis in the approximately 130,000 social homes owned by the local authorities. It is critical to the Government and to Members of this House that such homes are quickly refurbished and re-let to a family or individual on the waiting list. Properties that require little or no cost to re-let need to be returned to use immediately and that is what local authorities are doing on a daily basis. Many of them do that and carry out a quick turnaround. Some are slower and I encourage all local authorities to immediately re-let a property if it is possible to do so and not to let it sit idle for a number of months. Properties that require greater funding should also be attended to swiftly, even if there are a greater level of works, which take longer to complete, with higher costs involved.

This is where the voids programme assists and in addition to the supporting the upgrade costs, the programme also covers costs relating to the insulation and retrofitting of the property. Not only do social homes get remediated through this programme and made available to new tenants in very good condition, the energy efficiency of the homes is upgraded and, consequently, the new tenants will face lower fuel bills. During 2018, Department funding of €26.2 million was provided to bring 1,765 homes back to productive use. In fact, it was far more than we had targeted that year. A total of 1,765 homes were brought back into use and as our Rebuilding Ireland target was about 560, we went far beyond that target, and rightly so, because all of these homes should be back in use. I am on record, as is the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, as saying we want all of the void houses back in use with none left idle, because they have been left idle for too long.

Looking back over the years 2014 to 2018, which were mainly under the scope of Rebuilding Ireland but also stretching back before it, more than €145 million has been provided to support the refurbishment and return to use of almost 11,000 homes, which had been lying vacant for many years.That probably does not include last year's money.

Earlier this year, local authorities submitted details of their 2019 funding requests for voids to my Department and, as in previous years, work to return these properties is continuing. Under the insulation retrofitting part of the voids work, we claim back 50% EU co-funding, and an important part of this process involves the provision of building energy rating, BER, certificates showing the pre-works rating for each property. To finalise the distribution of the funding for this year across the 31 local authorities, my Department is awaiting the BER certificates for several of the properties, approximately 40%. I can indicate, however, that the funding provision for 2019 will be around the same level as the €26 million provided for 2018. We have asked local authorities to move that work on, and some are carrying it on and will submit the claims afterwards.

It is critical that we incentivise the local authorities to carry out the proper BER assessments to allow the Exchequer obtain the 50% EU co-funding. I ask my colleagues in this House to raise with the councillors in their areas the need for the councils themselves to provide a strong level of local funding for housing maintenance from the significant rental income that each receives. Councils need to support work on repairing their own housing stock, alongside the Exchequer funding that is being provided through my Department. It has been disappointing in a couple of cases to hear of councils actually reducing the allocations they make to maintain their housing stock. We have always said the voids programme will not be there forever. It was intended to tackle a backlog of more than 11,000 properties that needed a great deal of work. We have caught up on a lot of that and I stress to local authorities that, as time moves on, maintenance works have to be done regularly out of the rent they receive, if at all possible. Naturally the State will step in for deep retrofitting that needs to be done.

The voids programme has moved quite well. I am happy that most local authorities are doing a good job bringing them back into use. Some are lagging behind but the message is clear that we do not want long-term voids. Every local authority will be written to next October and told to bring forward extra voids if they have them and bolster their allocation for last year. No doubt the same will happen this year because a void is the quickest way to solve a housing problem for somebody.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I thank the Minister for that very comprehensive response. He is obviously on top of his brief. However, this is July 2019. Several local authorities are saying they are waiting to hear their allocations for this year. Will it be a matter of weeks? I presume so. We are coming into the summer holiday period and a slowdown in the construction sector, and some local authorities are saying they may not be able to get people to do work this side of September. This is all in 2019 but the allocation is intended for 2019 and these works need to start.

The Minister of State makes a very valid point about the proactive councillors in local authorities who help to push the thing along. I would like the Department's oversight of local authorities to continue because the Minister of State has said it is disappointing that some local authorities are now budgeting to spend less on their maintenance. There is the ongoing problem that some social houses are never inspected. I spoke to a woman who has been living in a local authority house for 20 years and it has never once been inspected, but that is an issue for another day.

Will the Minister of State indicate an approximate timeline for when councils can expect some notification? If some are falling behind on BER certificates, he should leave them behind. Let us move on with the ones that are organised and reward and incentivise them, to use the Minister of State's words. Let us incentivise the councils that are on top of their game, keen to get on with this work, that have provided the necessary information and BER certificates, and have met the criteria required by the scheme, and let them go ahead. Do not let the bad ones hold back the good ones.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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It is practically ready to go and we have communicated with local authorities over the year. They have their targets and know approximately what they will get and it is important that they plan for that. Some have made their plans and are implementing them, so there is no issue there. It is an issue for us. We need the BER certificates to be sure we are getting the value for taxpayers' money and to be able to recoup money from the EU. We hope they will come in quite soon. We are chasing them. The money will be spent on the voids and they will be brought back into use because we want them to do it that way. Local authorities will be asked to go beyond the targets.

The Senator mentioned that under Rebuilding Ireland every local authority has been given its targets for all the schemes. I stress they are minimum targets. Every local authority has been encouraged by me, the Minister and the officials at various meetings to go beyond those targets. The majority of councils went beyond their targets last year, and the Senator can see that in the tables. That is what we are trying to encourage. Some went 150% beyond and some 110% beyond.We met individually the local authorities that were below target to try to help them to come up to it because we want to reach it. Rebuilding Ireland involves a massive spend of almost €2.5 billion of taxpayers' money. It is important that we drive results through it, as I believe we are. This year we are on track to deliver more than 10,000 extra social housing homes. As that figure does not include all voids, there will be even more available. The number of new homes in the system will be 10,000 and it is important that we meet that milestone. All of the groups with which we have engaged in the past three or four years have asked us to get to the stage where, as a state, we deliver 10,000 homes a year. We are at that target this year and next year the number will be even higher. Under the ten-year capital plan under Project Ireland 2040, we have set aside money to provide 12,000 houses a year. That is far beyond for what anybody has asked, but that is where we should be and should stay in the coming years. The Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and I are committed to doing so, with the Department and my party. I ask others to readjust their plans for any future Government to the same level because we have to continue to deliver social housing every year and must not have a repeat of what happened under previous Governments when we stopped building social houses.