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For Written Answer on : 13/05/2021
Question Number(s): 263,264,265 Question Reference(s): 25398/21, 25405/21, 25407/21
Department: Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Asked by: David Stanton T.D.
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QUESTION
* To ask the Minister for Housing; Local Government and Heritage the number of properties that have been registered on a website (details supplied) in each year since it was established by county; the number of these properties that have been brought back into use in each of these years by county; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
– David Stanton T.D.
For WRITTEN answer on Thursday, 13 May, 2021.
* To ask the Minister for Housing; Local Government and Heritage the local authorities that have put in place a vacant homes action plan as required by circular PL7/2017; if he has received feedback on the effectiveness or otherwise of these action plans; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
– David Stanton T.D.
For WRITTEN answer on Thursday, 13 May, 2021.
* To ask the Minister for Housing; Local Government and Heritage the additional supports that his Department has made available to the respective local authorities to enable them to appoint vacant home officers; the number of such officers appointed by each local authority in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
– David Stanton T.D.
For WRITTEN answer on Thursday, 13 May, 2021.
REPLY
(See attached file: Table 3 for PQs 25398+25405+25407.xlsx)
The National Vacant Housing Reuse Strategy, which was published by my Department in 2018, strives to provide a targeted, effective and co-ordinated approach to identifying and tackling vacancy across Ireland. To assist local authorities in achieving this objective, my Department has, since 2018, provided funding to each local authority of €50,000 per annum. This funding is to support the work of a Vacant Homes Office, including a Vacant Homes Officer for each local authority.
The provision of central funding provides for focus to be given to the role of the Office and reinforces the capacity of the Department’s Vacant Homes Unit to liaise with and seek information/statistics from a dedicated contact point within each local authority. All 31 local authorities have claimed their funding up to June 2021 and this funding has been secured up to June 2022.
Table 1 below lists the number of Vacant Homes Officers in each local authority on a full or part-time basis:
Table 1
| Local Authority | No. of Vacant Homes Officers | Full-time | Part-time |
| Carlow | 1 | 1 | |
| Cavan | 1 | 1 | |
| Clare | 1 | 1 | |
| Cork City | 1 | 1 | |
| Cork County | 2 | 2 | |
| Donegal | 1 | 1 | |
| Dublin City | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| Dun Laoghaire | 1 | 1 | |
| Fingal | 1 | 1 | |
| Galway City | 1 | 1 | |
| Galway County | 1 | 1 | |
| Kerry | 1 | 1 | |
| Kildare | 1 | 1 | |
| Kilkenny | 1 | 1 | |
| Laois | 1 | 1 | |
| Leitrim | 1 | 1 | |
| Limerick | 1 | 1 | |
| Longford | 1 | 1 | |
| Louth | 1 | 1 | |
| Mayo | 1 | 1 | |
| Meath | 2 | 2 | |
| Monaghan | 2 | 2 | |
| Offaly | 1 | 1 | |
| Roscommon | 1 | 1 | |
| Sligo | 2 | 2 | |
| South Dublin | 1 | 1 | |
| Tipperary | 1 | 1 | |
| Waterford | 1 | 1 | |
| Westmeath | 1 | 1 | |
| Wexford | 1 | 1 | |
| Wicklow | 1 | 1 |
Each of the 31 local authorities have prepared a Vacant Homes Action Plan for their administrative area. The Vacant Home Action Plan identifies the scale of vacant homes in a local authority’s jurisdiction and sets ambitious but realistic targets of the number of vacant homes that can ultimately be brought back into use.
As emphasised in the National Vacant Housing Reuse Strategy, securing improved data and analysis on vacancy allows for more robust monitoring of vacancy at a national level and improved outputs at local level. To help record levels of vacancy, the vacanthomes.ie website has been developed by Mayo County Council on behalf of the local government sector. This provides a central portal for individuals to anonymously log possible vacant properties and alert local authorities to those properties. As appropriate, Vacant Homes Officers can then follow up with the owners to see whether the house can be re-used quickly.
The latest statistics from vacanthomes.ie indicate that 5,210 properties have been recorded on the website since 2017.
Table 2 below indicates the number of properties registered on vacanthomes.ie by year and county:
Table 2
| Vacant Homes Logged | |||||
| Local Authority | Dec 2017 | Dec 2018 | Dec 2019 | Dec 2020 | 11 May 2021 |
| Leinster | |||||
| Carlow | 18 | 19 | 29 | 41 | 44 |
| Dublin City | 247 | 350 | 436 | 499 | 542 |
| DLR | 60 | 60 | 102 | 124 | 130 |
| Fingal | 49 | 60 | 82 | 104 | 122 |
| Kildare | 58 | 90 | 161 | 198 | 208 |
| Kilkenny | 27 | 35 | 46 | 60 | 75 |
| Laois | 12 | 21 | 38 | 52 | 56 |
| Longford | 14 | 17 | 29 | 34 | 40 |
| Louth | 60 | 97 | 151 | 169 | 178 |
| Meath | 37 | 103 | 140 | 153 | 163 |
| Offaly | 26 | 3 | 38 | 84 | 92 |
| SDCC | 75 | 98 | 143 | 177 | 211 |
| Westmeath | 58 | 69 | 87 | 105 | 108 |
| Wexford | 35 | 63 | 91 | 105 | 114 |
| Wicklow | 34 | 54 | 73 | 84 | 90 |
| Total | 810 | 1139 | 1646 | 1989 | 2173 |
| Munster | |||||
| Clare | 23 | 21 | 63 | 123 | 150 |
| Cork City | 73 | 113 | 136 | 166 | 178 |
| Cork County | 177 | 362 | 588 | 667 | 1072 |
| Kerry | 43 | 45 | 49 | 61 | 66 |
| Limerick City | 8 | 18 | 38 | 45 | 49 |
| Limerick County | 23 | 46 | 112 | 138 | 147 |
| Tipperary | 34 | 44 | 75 | 93 | 107 |
| Waterford City | 8 | 28 | 42 | 51 | 58 |
| Waterford County | 16 | 57 | 83 | 104 | 124 |
| Total | 405 | 734 | 1186 | 144 | 1951 |
| Connacht | |||||
| Galway City | 27 | 55 | 102 | 124 | 129 |
| Galway County | 64 | 92 | 107 | 129 | 137 |
| Leitrim | 9 | 16 | 41 | 43 | 44 |
| Mayo | 62 | 76 | 177 | 205 | 221 |
| Roscommon | 19 | 28 | 55 | 76 | 84 |
| Sligo | 16 | 24 | 39 | 45 | 47 |
| Total | 197 | 291 | 521 | 662 | 662 |
| Ulster | |||||
| Cavan | 9 | 15 | 49 | 272 | 319 |
| Donegal | 21 | 34 | 54 | 67 | 85 |
| Monaghan | 15 | 17 | 22 | 16 | 20 |
| Total | 45 | 66 | 125 | 355 | 424 |
| Grand Total | 1457 | 2230 | 3478 | 4414 | 5210 |
Table 3 in the excel spreadsheet attached provides the number of properties brought back into use by year and county under the Repair and Lease Scheme, the Housing Agency Acquisitions Fund and the Buy and Renew Scheme. These are the three key supports available from my Department to owners to bring vacant housing stock back into use as social housing.
| Repair and Lease | Housing Agency Acquisition Fund | Buy and Renew | Totals | |||||||
| Local Authority | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2017-2020 | |
| Carlow County Council | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 32 | 43 |
| Cavan County Council | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| Clare County Council | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 28 | 35 |
| Cork City Council | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 1 | 43 | 53 |
| Cork County Council | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 32 | 35 | 3 | 33 | 106 |
| Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 6 | 1 | 13 | 29 |
| Donegal County Council | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 12 |
| Dublin City Council | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 97 | 17 | 21 | 58 | 200 |
| Fingal County Council | 0 | 7 | 20 | 0 | 1 | 79 | 7 | 6 | 40 | 160 |
| Galway City Council | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 1 | 18 |
| Galway County Council | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 17 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 24 |
| Kerry County Council | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 9 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 42 | 65 |
| Kildare County Council | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 36 | 14 | 16 | 8 | 82 |
| Kilkenny County Council | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 7 | 19 |
| Laois County Council | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 19 | 4 | 0 | 21 | 46 |
| Leitrim County Council | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 11 |
| Limerick City and County Council | 0 | 8 | 4 | 5 | 0 | 9 | 8 | 5 | 69 | 108 |
| Longford County Council | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 11 | 24 |
| Louth County Council | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 83 | 95 |
| Mayo County Council | 0 | 0 | 2 | 8 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 20 |
| Meath County Council | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 14 | 14 | 2 | 51 | 85 |
| Monaghan County Council | 0 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 19 | 28 |
| Offaly County Council | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 4 | 0 | 5 | 17 |
| Roscommon County Council | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 9 |
| Sligo County Council | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| South Dublin County Council | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 36 | 19 | 9 | 0 | 69 |
| Tipperary County Council | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 9 | 1 | 23 | 63 |
| Waterford City and County Council | 6 | 35 | 41 | 31 | 0 | 14 | 5 | 4 | 47 | 183 |
| Westmeath County Council | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 18 |
| Wexford County Council | 2 | 11 | 0 | 14 | 1 | 11 | 2 | 2 | 15 | 58 |
| Wicklow County Council | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 17 |
| TOTALS | 9 | 80 | 76 | 69 | 36 | 481 | 192 | 95 | 670 | 1,708 |
