Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Pillar 5 of the Government's Rebuilding Ireland: Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness 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. In this regard, Action 5.1 of Rebuilding Ireland commits to the development of a national vacant housing strategy, informed by Census 2016 data.

To this end, the Housing Agency established a working group, comprising senior representatives from my Department, local authorities and from the Housing Agency itself to inform the strategy. My Department has received the output from the work of this group and is presently engaging with key Departments and agencies to consider the analysis and agree on the recommended actions, prior to publication.

While my Department does not hold the information requested by the Deputy, the Central Statistics Office has made available a variety of data from the Census of Population 2016 on vacant residential properties. On 20 April, CSO published a comprehensive report, entitled Profile 1 - Housing in Ireland which can be accessed via the following link: .

As per this Census 2016 data, the total housing stock in County Kerry was 74,094, of which 9,691 were classified as vacant households (excluding holiday homes). Further information on the number of vacant residential properties by small area in respect of County Kerry has since been made available on the CSO website, at the following link: . In this context, the CSO shows a breakdown of the number of vacant dwellings in County Kerry by municipal district as follows:

Due to data protection issues, I understand that the CSO cannot provide the specific location of vacant properties at a more granular level.