Will the Minister update the Dáil on the funding allocated to local authorities to bring the thousands of vacant properties back into public use for social housing, and will he make a statement on the matter?
Sentiment score: 0.03
Can I give the Minister of State a bit of advice and provide him with a solution? I sincerely want the Government to take this on board. He has just said the voids programme will be open in the new year. Why is it not open today? Why is the voids programme not open 365 days a year so that when a house comes back, the local authority can fix it up and allocate it out? Opening it just once or twice a year does not make sense. I am trying to be constructive but the Government always criticises us and says there is nothing coming from the Opposition. This is a simple fix here: keep the void programme open for 365 days a year so that houses are not left to rot. Can I give the Minister of State one statistic? Data I received earlier this year from local authorities showed that one in four vacant houses is idle longer than 12 months. If we open the voids programme all year long, that will stop. We could get a fix here today. We could agree on this. We are trying to be cross-party constructive and that is something we could do together that would make a real difference to social housing and people on the housing list.
Sentiment score: 0.04
I am not sure if the Minister of State knows this, but he should. If someone is not telling him this, he should get into the Department tomorrow and ask the question. He talks about preventative maintenance. At the current rate of preventative maintenance, it will take 78 years to do the stock survey of all local authority housing. That is the figure the Government provided to me - 78 years - and he comes in here to answer the question saying this is what the Government has planned. There are people who are living in mouldy, damp houses with leaks in the roof and windows and front doors that are unfit. People have heating systems that are not up to standard and the Minister of State comes in here talking about preventative maintenance. The Department cannot even do the audit. If it cannot do the audit and does not have the information, how is it going to do the maintenance? Does the Minister of State know how much was allocated for preventative maintenance? It was €67 per house for each local authority. Each local authority is to have €67 to calculate what preventative maintenance needs to be done. Does the Minister of State really think that is going to do the job? I am asking him a straight yes-no question. I am telling him it will not.
Sentiment score: 0.02
I got the figures from the Department.
Sentiment score: 0.00
These are the facts.
Sentiment score: 0.00