Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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142. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government his views on correspondence regarding a matter (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16557/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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My Department funds a programme to return vacant social housing to productive use which has been in operation in its current format since 2014; under this programme, a total of €60 million was provided to local authorities between 2014 and 2015 to support the return of 5,000 properties to use. This substantial funding over 2014/15 supported local authorities to deal with a backlog of vacant social housing units and that support is continuing into 2016.

Funding support of up to €30,000 per social housing unit is available under the programme. The average cost of the works carried out in 2015 was just over €12,000, which reflects the fact that vacated social housing can be in need of varying levels of refurbishment. In addition to the 5,000 housing units referred to, many other vacated social houses are repaired and re-let by local authorities without drawing on Departmental funding. Such houses are repaired as part of the normal maintenance work that local authorities carry out continuously on their social housing stock. There is no requirement for local authorities to hold a social house in a vacant state for a specific period before drawing down funding support from my Department and, in fact, local authorities should carry out works on all such housing units as soon as possible and re-let them without delay.

There will always be a low level of vacant social housing stock, with the number of such units nationally changing daily, as would be expected in the management of thousands of homes by local authorities where tenants move in and out all the time. The feedback from local authorities is that rates of vacant units are now as low as 1-2% in many cases and the build-up of vacant units prior to 2014 has been substantially addressed via the investment in 2014/15.