Chai Brady
More than 3,500 council-owned houses are currently vacant across Ireland, according to new figures revealed by Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín TD this week.
Following Freedom of Information requests sent to all local authorities, the figures released also revealed that nationally there are 98,171 people on housing waiting lists, 54,468 households or people in receipt of the housing assistance payment HAP, and 10,603 in the Rental Accommodation Scheme RAS.
Reacting to the vacant housing figure, Mr Tóibín said: “It is incredible that in the jaws of a national emergency in terms of housing that well over 3,500 local authority homes are lying empty tonight.
“According to Aontú’s findings, there are enough empty local authority homes in the state to house well over half the number of people who are homeless. Much of the focus of the political bubble has been on the large number of empty homes in private hands. However, we in Aontú believe that it’s unforgivable that state bodies themselves preside over empty homes. Thousands of homeless people are living in emergency accommodation throughout the country at great human cost to themselves and at great financial cost to the State.”
Dublin City Council currently owns 712 vacant houses. Cork City Council has 350, Limerick City and County Council has 228, while Cork County Council has 184, followed by Wicklow with 175, Donegal with 171, Kerry with 149 and Galway City with 127.
Deputy Tóibín continued: “There will always be a length of time and a level of turnover of local authority accommodation. But there appears to be a growing dysfunction in some arms of the State when dealing with housing. Bureaucracy, red tape, poor management, lack of staff and inefficiency is making housing provision grindingly slow. The average time taken to re-let council homes has been increasing steadily since 2018 and averaged almost eight months in 2021.”
In a statement, the Department of Housing said: “Since 2020, 6,300 vacant social homes have been brought back into productive use and Minister O’Brien has approved €31 million in funding to support the return of 2,300 vacant local authority homes this year.
“A programme of works has been submitted by all local authorities under this programme, and the Department will make every effort to approve requests for additional funding where additional vacant properties can be remediated and tenanted in addition to the annual target.”