Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Both Cavan County Council and Monaghan County Council have prepared a Vacant Homes Action Plan for their administrative areas.

In August 2017, I requested all local authorities to designate vacant home officers to co-ordinate local actions to address vacancy 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.

The role and range of duties of the Vacant Homes Office within each local authority includes (but is not be limited to) establishing a co-ordinated approach towards the implementation of the Action Plans, i.e. developing appropriate referral and feedback systems between relevant sections who may be dealing with vacant homes/properties in each local authority, undertaking initial vacancy assessment exercise (drilling into available vacancy data), and carrying out or co-ordinating visual inspections / assessment of residential properties in their administrative area, with a view to identifying possible vacant recoverable homes.

Where local authorities identify a potentially long term vacant residential dwelling, and the owner can be identified the local authority attempts to engage with the owners on the options available to assist in bringing their properties back into use for in the liveable housing stock.

Since the launch of Rebuilding Ireland, in the region of 553 vacant homes have been re-introduced to the liveable housing stock, primarily through our Repair and Lease, and Buy and Renew initiatives. Local authorities are also working hard to bring homes back into use by acquiring dwellings in unfinished estates, liaising with financial institutions on their vacant property portfolios and utilising CPO powers to acquire empty properties. These recovered properties aid us in the ongoing effort to meeting our commitments under Pillar 5 of Rebuilding Ireland, which sets out a range of measures to assist in meeting Ireland’s housing needs by ensuring that Ireland’s existing housing stock is used to the greatest extent possible.

My Department has also made legislative amendments in support of the reactivation of the optimum number of vacant residential properties. New exempted development Regulations which came into operation in early 2018, allow for the change of use, and any related works, of certain vacant commercial premises to residential use without the need to obtain planning permission. We also introduced Regulations late last year to provide clarity on the application of Disability Access Certificates to existing buildings when brought back into reuse.

Having regard to potentially vacant space above retail space, my Department has recently launched the Bringing Back Homes – Manual for the reuse of existing buildings, to help property owners, the public, local authorities and the construction industry to developing vacant buildings and space over commercial property. Bringing Back Homes aims to help increase housing supply as well as rejuvenate town centres and city streets. Publication of the manual was a commitment under Action 5.21 of Rebuilding Ireland: Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness and is also referenced in the National Vacant Housing Reuse Strategy. Amongst other things, the manual provides a suite of reuse options for common building types and elaborates on the complexity associated with each option giving an overview of the technical requirements associated with creating ‘over the shop’ space into residential units.

In order to more accurately determine the levels of long-term, vacant but recoverable dwellings that can be re-introduced into the liveable housing stock, the Department, in conjunction with the Housing Agency, the CSO and the local government sector, developed a survey methodology in relation to locating vacant housing and a pilot field-based survey was undertaken across six local authorities (Cork City Council, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, Limerick City and County Council, Mayo County Council, Meath County Council, Waterford City and County Council.)

Each participating local authority visually inspected approximately 1,200 homes each, recording the location of potentially vacant properties, and where possible, recording apparent reasons for vacancy and categorising each vacant home (with a view to prioritising those which are seen as most likely to be re-introduced into the liveable housing stock). To identify long-term vacancy, the pilot requires two visual inspections, six months apart, with those houses occupied between the two inspections disregarded.

The participating local authorities have completed their work on the pilot vacancy identification survey and my Department are analysing the results of the pilot survey and is currently considering the outcomes to determine whether there would be significant value in rolling out the survey on a national basis.

While neither Cavan County Council nor Monaghan County Council were involved in the pilot vacancy survey, both have requested access to the GIS application that was used during the pilot, which will allow them visually inspect and log potentially long-term vacant properties in their administrative area, which could be re-introduced into the liveable housing stock.