Calls to bring vacant Ballymun-Finglas homes back into use

Conor Reddy, People Before Profit’s election candidate in Ballymun-Finglas, has gathered over 500 signatures on a petition calling for Dublin City Council to bring vacant homes back into use. 

Statistics from the Central Statistics Office and Department of Housing from 2022 show there were 166,000 vacant homes in Ireland in 2022, with over 50,000 of them vacant for over five years.

Last month, homeless figures in Ireland exceeded 14,000, with 10,000 of that figure coming from Dublin.

“Vacant homes have become a haven for illegal dumping and anti-social behaviour in Ballymun-Finglas,” Reddy said.

The recent petition launched by People Before Profit calls on Dublin City Council to do three things:

1. Publish a list of all vacant council-owned homes Including dates they became vacant. Guarantee works will commence to bring all voids back into use within 4 weeks of becoming vacant.
2. Survey Ballymun-Finglas for derelict privately owned homes. Apply vacant home tax to them and compulsory purchase long-term vacant houses to use them for social housing.
3. Hire maintenance and construction houses in Ballymun-Finglas to tackle voids, speed up repairs for council tenants and to begin retrofits of social homes for energy efficiency.

It is understood that the local People Before Profit branch will hand petitions in to Civic Offices next month with the help of local activists.

They will also send copies of the petition to all local councillors, in an attempt to push the issue of vacancy onto the local political agenda.

Discussing the campaign, said Reddy said “it is a disgrace that so many homes across Ballymun-Finglas lay vacant.”

“Ballymun and Finglas have some of the longest housing wait lists in the country and huge numbers living in miserable, insecure, expensive or overcrowded conditions.”

“Coming from the locked out, Generation Rent who have little prospect of home ownership, I find it galling, particularly when private owners and funds hoard empty homes. Knocking doors with our petition we have encountered desperation and horror stories – this is what Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have created. It is what Dublin City Council, led by Fianna Fáil have allowed and it is not good enough. The council must act by hiring maintenance crews to accelerate works and they must use CPO powers where private properties are vacant long term’.