Tag Archives: Vacant houses

Census 2016 figures and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy

You may recall the Census 2016 figures which showed 183, 312 vacant houses in Ireland – excluding vacant holiday homes.

And yesterday’s figures showing 8,160 people were registered as homeless in the last week of July.

Further to this…

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar spoke to journalists following the emergency housing summit in Custom House this morning.

While speaking to them, Mr Varadkar raised the subject of vacant houses.

He said:

“On the vacant house tax, that is something that’s under consideration but, again, a very interesting discussion with the Chief Executives today if you take for example Fingal or Galway where they’ve actually gone out to the individual houses to see how many are vacant while the CSO may say there’s a certain number and geocodes say there’s another number, when the council staff have actually gone out to the houses and apartments and knocked on doors, they’ve found that the numbers that are really vacant are actually much smaller than any of the figures show.”

Pic: Michael Lehane

Earlier: When Anthony Met The Housing Minister

Boarded up homes on Connaught St, Phibsboro earlier this year

Readers may recall the most recent Census figures estimating that there are approximately 183,000 vacant homes in Ireland, excluding holiday homes.

More than 20,000 of these are in Dublin.

Readers may also recall how 7,941 people were registered as homeless in Ireland, in June 2017.

Further to this…

Olivia Kelly, in The Irish Times, reports:

Just seven Dublin property owners have applied for grants of up to €40,000 to allow their rundown vacant houses be refurbished for homeless families.

The Repair and Leasing scheme was established 10 months ago under the Government’s Rebuilding Ireland plan to tackle the housing and homelessness crises.

A fund of €32 million has been allocated to the scheme this year with a target of bringing 800 homes into use by the end of the year.

However, to date no homes have been secured in Dublin, and contracts on just seven houses have been signed nationally, but none have yet been refurbished and handed over to local authorities.

Vacant property owners turn down €32m grant scheme (The Irish Times)

Pic: Cuffe Street