John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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665. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government his views on the effectiveness of the vacant site levy; the sites under development as a direct result of this initiative; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8241/19]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Under the vacant site levy provisions in the Urban Regeneration and Housing Act 2015, planning authorities are empowered to apply a vacant site levy of 3% of the market value of relevant vacant sites where a site exceeds 0.05 hectares in area, was in the planning authority’s opinion vacant or idle in 2018, and is in an area identified by the planning authority in its development plan or local area plan for residential or regeneration development. As signalled in Budget 2018, the rate of the levy has been increased to 7% for sites on a local authority vacant sites register from 2019 onwards.

My Department does not maintain a central register of vacant sites, as each local authority administers the vacant site register in respect of their functional area. As provided for under the Act, the register in respect of each local authority is available for inspection at its offices and online on its website. However, on foot of a recent review of the on-line vacant site registers across all local authority areas, I understand that there are collectively over 380 individual sites currently on the local registers. Over 130 of these sites were entered on the local vacant site registers on 1 January 2018 and will therefore be subject to the levy in 2019, unless development works were activated in the interim.

My Department will continue to monitor implementation of the levy to ensure that it is being effectively applied, in line with its intended purpose of incentivising the development of vacant or under-utilised sites in urban areas. To support this work, my Department requested a progress report on implementation of the Vacant Site Levy in October 2018 from each local authority. My Department has received the progress reports and is currently collating and reviewing the information received. From an initial review of the progress reports, it is noted that planning authorities have indicated that over 40 sites have been removed from registers due to construction work commencing or development being completed on the site.