Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent)
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529. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if he is satisfied with the turnaround time for local authority housing when being refurbished for new tenants; if his attention has been drawn to the fact that some of the times are excessive in view of the scale of the local authority housing list and the national emergency; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52056/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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My Department has been providing strong funding support to all local authorities to undertake remediation work to vacant social housing units and to re-let such housing, as soon as possible. The Voids Programme, introduced by my Department in 2014, is aimed at minimising the turnaround and re-let time of vacant units and returning them to use in a very energy efficient condition.

Since 2014, almost €100m in exchequer funding has been made available by my Department to bring over 7,000 social housing homes back into use for tenants who need them.  I am satisfied that all local authorities appreciate the need to quickly remediate and re-let social homes that become vacant in an area of need.

The National Oversight and Audit Commission now monitors local authority performance in this and other areas, so that all local authorities can be benchmarked in terms of improving vacancy rates and turnaround times.