Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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229. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government further to Parliamentary Question No. 1358 of 7 November 2017, the reason for the discrepancy in the figures for local authority voids contained in the NOAC report 12 of May 2017, table F, pp 60/61, and the figures for long-term voids returned to stock funded by his Department; the way in which NOAC reported 4,202 voids of all categories based on 2014 figures yet his Department is asserting that 8,430 long-term voids have been returned to stock between 2014 and 2017; and if ordinary short term voids are being included in the figures provided in the parliamentary question concerned rather than long-term voids as was asked in the question. [48394/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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My Department introduced the Voids Programme to provide additional support to assist local authorities in remediating vacant local authority housing. Between 2014 and 2016 this programme remediated approximately 7,100 units. A key priority of this scheme is to rehouse homeless families to the fullest extent possible in homes that have been restored to an energy efficient condition.

The NOAC report provided data on the number of vacant units, whatever the duration, at the time of completion of the questionnaire (August to November 2015) whereas the Department’s figure is the number of units that were funded under the voids programme in a four year period. While it is likely that some of the units vacant in November 2015 could have been the subject of voids programme funding in 2016 or 2017, there is no direct relationship between the two figures.