Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 20 March 2025
8. Deputy Maurice Quinlivan asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the plans he has to increase the funding per unit for refurbishing vacant and derelict local authority houses; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12669/25]
View answerMy question is about local authority vacant homes, known as voids. Are there any plans for Government to increase the money allowed to each local authority per unit? It is an issue that causes concern across the State, particularly when people live next door to a local authority house that is boarded up, which can be the case for a number of years. Is the Minister of State increasing the funding per unit?
I thank the Deputy for the question. I know voids and refurbishment are issues he has raised previously. The management and maintenance of local authority housing stock, including pre-letting repairs to vacant properties, is a matter for each individual local authority under section 58 of the Housing Act 1966. Local authorities also have a legal obligation to ensure all their tenanted properties are compliant with the provisions of the Housing (Standards for Rented Houses) Regulations 2019.
Notwithstanding this, my Department provides annual funding support to local authorities in preparing vacant units for re-let under the voids programme. Since 2014 to the end of 2024, Exchequer funding of €361.6 million has been recouped to local authorities, which has supported the refurbishment and re-let of 25,672 dwellings. The emphasis of the programme is on those refurbishment works necessary to comply with the Housing (Standards for Rented Houses) Regulations 2019 to ensure quick turnaround and re-letting times. All future works should be deferred and carried out under planned maintenance over the life cycle of the asset. Under the voids programme, there is no upper cap that can be spent on an individual dwelling providing the overall average per dwelling of €11,000 is maintained. Funding is also available under the energy efficiency programme of up to €48,850 and can be used in parallel with voids funding where turnaround times are not affected. As part of the programme for Government, consideration is being given to the introduction of a new voids programme with a view to further improve turnaround times of vacant social housing units.
I thank the Minister of State. I am not sure I heard him correctly in respect of a limit of €11,000. Limerick council gets €11,000 per unit for each house it does up. The average cost per unit to the council is €48,000. The cost of refurbishment is a major problem, which the council cannot afford itself. We need to look at the issue clearly. Local authorities such as Limerick cannot refurbish these properties without meaningful support from central government. The current grant was not even increased in line with construction inflation. These sites are eyesores which bring down the value of property when they could be used to house local families. I was dealing with a family recently who are living in emergency accommodation in a hotel. The mother was looking out at the estate she comes fro, where three local authority houses have been boarded up for more than two years. The system is not working properly. As I have said in this House previously, void houses can be a magnet for antisocial behaviour and dumping rubbish, with people gathering around them. It is not fair on the neighbours. We need a better system whereby councils are funded and can deliver the return on these houses.
I agree that void houses are an issue, not just from an antisocial behaviour point of view. They are low-hanging fruit in terms of getting houses back into the social housing stock, where they are desperately needed. Some local authorities are better than others but, to be fair, a lot of progress has been made. More than 25,000 voids have been returned to the housing stock in recent years, which means the schemes we have introduced are working. I do not have specific figures in respect of Limerick local authority. Certain local authorities are excellent in terms of turnaround speed, getting their voids back into the housing stock quickly and availing of the grants that are in place. To clarify, the average allowed per house is €11,000 but there is no upper limit per house for refurbishment. This can also be done in conjunction with the energy efficiency schemes. A significant amount is available under those schemes. I agree with the Deputy that we need to get all voids back into the housing stock as quickly as possible.
Limerick council has done a very good job when it can, when it has the money. The process is cumbersome. They have to through bundles; they cannot just do one but have to do a couple. It takes quite a while to come back. Many of the houses that are boarded up have only minor works to be done. While waiting for authorisation from the Department, they end up being boarded up, which costs €3,000 to €4,000. Nobody wants to live next to a house that is boarded up. It is not fair when there is family coming to visit. The estate does not look great. The issue here is making the process simpler and funding the councils to be able to deliver. For instance, in Limerick there are always 200 vacant houses. When we get 20 done, 20 more come onstream. There is no plan to address this, to get it back to zero and start again. That is what we need to do. We need to change the system. It is low-hanging fruit, as the Minister of State said. This is the fastest way to deliver social housing and people are in need of those properties.
I will try to be constructive but, following on from my colleague, €11,000 is a joke of an amount of money. I appeal to the Minister of State to increase that amount. A local authority that has a property that will cost between €50,000 and €80,000 to fix will leave it idle and fix the voids that are cheaper.
The Government is only giving €11,000 plus the grant for the retrofitting, so call it €25,000. Therefore, all the cheaper houses are done first, but what happens then is that the local authorities are leaving the houses that are worst affected idle for years. Houses in my constituency have been left idle for three or four years and it then causes antisocial behaviour and dumping. Can the Minister of State imagine the environment in which the children are growing up? Without criticising the Minister of State because he is new into the job - I said this to previous housing Ministers and I will say it to him now - will he please increase the funding? Many local authorities do not have the budgets to carry out that work. In Cork, there are hundreds of boarded-up void houses. Can the Minister of State imagine being homeless and looking at them? It is a sin.
I thank Deputy Gould for his contribution. As I said, €11,000 is not a limit - more can be put into individual houses - but that is an average. It can also be combined with those energy efficiency grants. Much can be done in terms of improving houses with those energy efficiency grants, which, as I said, are upwards of €48,000. If there are problem areas, I know the Minister, Deputy Browne, has an open-door policy. If there are geographical areas or certain areas in which certain issues need bespoke approaches, I am sure conversations can be had in that regard. However, to say the scheme is not working is unfair. Some 20,000 voids have been brought back into use. Obviously, I was more familiar with the county council than the city council but certainly the work that Cork County Council did in bringing a lot of these long-term voids back into use was quite impressive. To say the scheme is not working is unfair, but if there are problematic areas or houses that have been void long-term then perhaps there can be discussions in terms of bespoke solutions.
We move now to Question No. 10 in the name of Deputy O'Reilly.
