Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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54. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if he has received returns from all local authorities regarding the audit of empty houses in their administrative areas; the substantive information that has been returned, if there are some that have supplied no information; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8825/17]

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Pillar 5 of the Government's Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness - Rebuilding Ireland is specifically focused 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 the development of 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 coordinating the development of the Strategy, has established a working group in September 2016 comprising of senior representatives from my Department, local authorities and from the Housing Agency itself to inform the Strategy. The Group is due to report by the end of the first quarter of 2017.

As indicated, it is intended to facilitate the development of a national database of vacant houses under the auspices of the National Vacant HousingRe-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.