Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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507. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if he will establish unused properties registers across all local authorities (details supplied). [1393/17]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Pillar 5 of the Government's Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness – Rebuilding Irelandis specifically focussed on Utilising Existing Housing Stock with a key objective of ensuring that the existing vacant housing stock throughout the country and across all forms of tenure, in both the public and private sectors, is used to the optimum degree possible. In this regard, action 5.1 of Rebuilding Ireland commits to developing a National Vacant Housing Re-Use Strategy by the first quarter of 2017, informed by Census 2016 data, to

- inform the compilation of a register of vacant units across the country,

- identify the number, location and reasons for longer-term vacancies (i.e. over 6 months) in high demand areas, and

- set out a range of actions to bring vacant units back into reuse.

To this end, the Housing Agency, which has lead responsibility for co-ordinating the development of the Strategy, has established a working group, comprising senior representatives from my Department, local authorities and from the Housing Agency itself to inform the Strategy. The Working Group has met five times to date.

As indicated, it is intended to facilitate the development of a national database of vacant houses under the auspices of the National Vacant Housing Re-use Strategy. The database will aim to include –

- the number of vacant homes in each local authority area,

- the addresses of the vacant homes,

- the length of vacancy in each case, and

- the reason(s) for vacancy.

Work is progressing on identifying possible sources of data and information to assist in the most efficient means of compiling such a database.