Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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234. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government the total number of local authority voids returned to stock in each year from 2010 to 2015 and to date in 2016; the target for the total to be returned to stock by the end of 2016; the total remaining voids expected at the end of 2016; the plan from 2017 onwards to return these voids to stock by local authority area; and the total cost and projected cost of bringing these units back into stock annually from 2010. [29702/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The routine turnaround of vacant social housing stock is a matter for each local authority and is carried out under their on going maintenance programme. A programme of retrofitting was introduced in 2009 and ran until 2014. This programme included remedial works, energy efficiency measures and works on vacant social housing units. Under this programme improvements were carried out to over 7,000 social units nationally.

The current voids programme, supporting local authorities in returning vacant social housing units to productive use, commenced in 2014 and is a target driven and cost effective voids retrofitting programme. The numbers of social houses returned to productive use and the costs are as follows:

*To date in 2016, 424 units have been returned ; many other units are complete or almost complete and will be claimed shortly .

** Funding for 2017 will be determined in the context of the estimate process.

It should be noted that there will always be a level of vacant social houses at any given point in time owing to the fact that the numbers of vacant properties nationally changes on a daily basis due to local authorities having social units handed back and as units are re-let. The number of vacant units will therefore fluctuate constantly, as would be expected in the management of the thousands of homes owned by local authorities, where tenancies change on a regular basis.

The low rates of vacant units of 1-2% reported by some authorities in 2016 is a strong indication that the local authorities, through the additional provision of funding provided by my Department, have substantially addressed the backlog that had accumulated pre-2014.