Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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650. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the progress made by local authority CEOs in designating vacant home officers in each of their authorities as per his instruction in August 2017; the number of officers that have been designated; the authorities in which they have been designated; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3180/18]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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The information requested by the Deputy is set out in the following table.

In August 2017, I requested all local authorities to designate vacant home officers to co-ordinate local actions to address vacancy in their functional areas and also to undertake local vacancy surveys in order to identify - through their Vacant Homes Action Plans - priority "vacancy hot-spot areas" and properties that can be quickly brought back into residential use.

It is a matter for local authority Chief Executives to make the organisational arrangements, including with regard to staffing, necessary for carrying out the functions of the local authorities and to assign staff to specific functional areas, having regard to the continued delivery of key services in the context of the current staffing and budgetary constraints.

I am informed that 25 local authorities have to date designated vacant homes officers within their respective functional areas. Some of these have been designated from within existing staff resources, while some have been designated on an interim basis pending the recruitment of dedicated additional staff to the role. My Department will continue to engage on an ongoing basis with local authorities with a view to progressing measures to bring as many vacant and underutilised properties as possible back into residential use.

*Galway City Council advised (in December 2017) that an Officer would be designated in January 2018. However confirmation of this designation is still awaited.