Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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463. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government for an update on the progress of the new voids programme, as promised in the Programme for Government 2025, to improve the turnaround of vacant social housing units and if AHBs are now being provided with tenant nominations prior to housing completions; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [56597/25]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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My Department is working, in line with Programme for Government commitments, to introduce a new voids programme. I am focussed on building on the strong progress made over recent years to tackle local authority vacancy levels. This progress has been enabled by significant funding from my Department over the last 10 years, with over €360m recouped to local authorities under the voids programme since 2014 and supporting the refurbishment and re-let of 25,672 dwellings.

Given the significant scale of investment over the decade, all legacy vacancy issues should have been dealt with local authorities at this stage. Accordingly, local authorities should be in a strong position regarding long-term vacancy and, with the ongoing support of my Department, being able to further transition to a strategic and planned stock management and maintenance approach.

With this in mind, I intend the new voids programme will renew the emphasis on prompt turnaround and re-letting of vacant units by focusing only on those works necessary to comply with the Housing (Standards for Rented Houses) Regulations 2019. Non-essential works should be carried out under each local authority’s planned maintenance programme informed by stock condition surveys, whereby all housing components are on an inspection, repair and replacement cycle.

While the management and maintenance of local authority housing stock is a matter for each local authority under s.58 of the Housing Act 1966, the approach being developed is necessary to ensure a strategic approach to managing and maintaining housing stock, informed by stock condition surveys, is in place, and vacancies are turned around quickly.

My Department has been working with local authorities and Approved Housing Bodies to identify opportunities to reduce the time it takes to allocate and tenant a social home. It is critical the allocation systems and procedures utilised by local authorities and AHBs operate to ensure there is no avoidable delay in households in need of accommodation being provided with these homes. The Local Government Sector published a code of practice for AHB nominations in 2022, which sought to standardise the end-to-end allocation process and eliminate avoidable delays that could result in a property remaining vacant. My Department is establishing a working group to review this code to ensure it is being consistently implemented across AHBs and local authorities.