Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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163. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if he will report on the turnaround of Dublin local authority voids, by local authority, taking into consideration the length of time from when one family moves out and another moves in, excluding and including refurbishments; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6225/17]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Statistics on the average re-letting times for local authority social housing are gathered by the National Oversight and Audit Commission and are set out by local authority in their report on Performance Indicators in Local Authorities. These statistics are available for both 2014 and 2015 at the following links: and .

The statistics as gathered by the National Oversight and Audit Commission illustrate the average time from date of vacation of a social house to the date when a new tenancy has commenced. This includes the time taken to re-let a house and does not, therefore, separately capture the time from a house being vacated to when necessary repairs are complete.

Feedback from local authorities is that the time taken by them to turn around vacant social houses can vary significantly from property to property, depending on the level of refurbishment required in each individual case. Additionally, the funding that my Department provides to local authorities to remediate certain social housing includes support for the energy retrofitting of the property. While this may add to the work required to remediate a house, it is an important upgrade to the property which brings notable fuel efficiency advantages to the incoming tenant.

It is a matter for individual housing authorities to manage the allocation and re-lettings of dwellings within the terms of their approved Scheme of Letting Priorities. The routine turnaround of vacant social housing stock is carried out under their ongoing maintenance programme. In addition to this activity on routine re-lettings, my Department also supports local authorities to tackle stock that is vacant and in need of remediation to allow it to be re-let.

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.

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 of vacant units that had accumulated pre-2014.