Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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299. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if he has invited Cavan County Council to make an application for the vacant properties voids programme; if such an application has been submitted; the amount of funding his Department plans to allocate to the authority; the expected timeframe for release of the funding; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8565/21]

Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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300. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if he has invited Monaghan County Council to make an application for the vacant properties voids programme; if such an application has been submitted; the amount of funding his Department plans to allocate to the authority; the expected timeframe for release of the funding; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8566/21]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 299 and 300 together.

The management and maintenance of local authority housing stock, including pre-letting repairs to vacant properties, the implementation of a planned maintenance programme and carrying out of responsive repairs, are matters for each individual local authority under Section 58 of the Housing Act 1966.

Since 2014, Exchequer funding has also been provided through my Department's Voids Programme to support local authorities in preparing vacant units for re-letting. This funding was introduced originally to tackle long term vacant units and is now increasingly targeted to support authority's to ensure minimal turnaround and re-let times for vacant stock.

My Department will continue to support local authorities in their work in this area. As in previous years, all local authorities will be asked to make a funding application under the 2021 programme in respect of their vacant stock which will receive due consideration and funding allocations will issue to all local authorities in due course.

It is also important that local authorities increasingly move toward a preventative maintenance approach to the management of their housing stock and my Department is working with local authorities to this end.