Cabinet Committees
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-16
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

Local authorities have struggled with this for quite a long time. My own belief is that persistent misbehaviour and so on should mean you lose the tenancy. That is what should happen. It is hard. We know of housing estates that have awful tensions, difficulties and challenges. I would be glad to work with the Deputy on the issue. I will talk to the Minister about it.
Deputy Quaide spoke about the thousands of houses that have been left lying idle. We give responsibilities to the local authorities. Deputy Connolly talked about league tables. There is a league table showing which local authorities did what in respect of derelict sites. It is very telling. There are two or three that did an exceptional job. If they can do it, why cannot others? It begs the question of whether there is, or has been historically, inertia in local authorities about the Derelict Sites Act. Revenue will now be charged with it. That will bring about a change and better behaviour. The reason for the length of time, and I hope it can be accelerated, is the mapping. I have challenged officials from the Department of Finance and Revenue about this issue. I have asked why the maps are not there already and why they would take so long. Apparently, at the time of the land tax and others, the mapping was not as comprehensive as people would have expected.
That is the issue there. I think it is a game-changer and will be a game-changer.
Deputy Tóibín is making a link between falling fertility and the housing issue. Again, there are a number of variables, I imagine, responsible for that. The bottom line is we do need to provide more housing more quickly to as many young people as possible. It is a social need. Every young person in the country has a right to aspire to owning a home, and many do aspire to owning a home, or some young families being able to rent a home at an affordable cost. We are building substantially more houses than we did five years ago. We are doing about 30,000 odd now compared to 20,000 in 2020. We need to go to 50,000 and we need all hands on deck in that respect. I do not think enrolments are going down in schools yet, I think they are going up.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:28+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-16