Thousands of vacant council-owned houses nationwide

There are 3,544 council-owned houses currently lying vacant in Ireland according to research conducted by Aontú Leader Peadar Tóibín over the summer recess.

Deputy Tóibín says he secured the data after submitting requests under the Freedom of Information Act to all local authorities in the country.

The figures released also reveal 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.

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.

“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,” Deputy Tóibín said today.

“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.

“There will always be a length of time and a level 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.

“The HAP and RAS figures also show the continuing reliance on the private sector for the provision of social housing. In many ways this is robbing Peter to pay Paul. HAP and RAS are not additional housing units.

“They are homes taken from the private rental sector squeezing that section of the market further. We need new additional social housing units to really increase supply.

“State spending on rent subsidies is now well over €1bn per annum.

“This is dead money that has no long term benefit to society.

“If it was invested in the construction of social housing the asset would remain in the hands of the state with a rental income for decades into the future.

“It’s unacceptable that local authorities nationally are sitting on vacant houses in the teeth of this housing crisis, emergency and disaster”, concluded Tóibín.