Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-04
============================================================

Ivana Bacik (LAB), Dublin Bay South

On 4 October 2023, more than two years ago, I stood here and raised the disgraceful revelations that the HSE was sitting on a massive portfolio of vacant properties. Over 200 HSE-owned buildings and sites lay idle while the housing crisis tightened its grip on families. Back then, nearly 4,000 children were homeless and average rents for new tenancies stood at €1,590. Today, two years on, more than 5,000 children are without a home and rents for new tenancies have shot up to more than €1,700, and that is before the Government's so-called rent reforms come in. In the two years since the HSE was caught sitting on sites that could be turned into homes, Ireland's housing crisis has become ever more dire.
What did we learn just two days ago? In Monday's edition of the Irish Independent , it was reported the HSE still owns nearly 200 vacant properties, more than half of which are officially marked as surplus to requirement. These buildings were supposed to be converted into homes for people and families under the Government's last failed housing plan. Why has so little happened? The housing crisis is at emergency levels. Thousands of children are doing their homework in emergency accommodation. Our streets today are peppered with drenched sleeping bags, abandoned by people sleeping rough who have had to flee from the rain. People on good wages, like the man my office has been helping recently, are giving up hope of ever buying a home. He tells me he saw the one-bedroom apartment he viewed for sale reappear months later on daft.ie for rent, having been snapped up by institutional investors. That is a pattern we are seeing.
Yet, the HSE continues to give a bureaucratic shrug in the face of this national crisis. This cavalier approach, and it is not just the HSE, reflects something deeper, a Government dodging delivery. I looked back at the Taoiseach's response to me in 2023 on this question. In his reply, he told me to "get on to Dublin City Council". What a dismissive attitude to the issue of State-owned properties gathering dust while people are sleeping in doorways.
In my constituency, Dublin Bay South, just a few hundred metres from here, the Baggot Street hospital still lies empty, an eyesore reminding us of the continued vacancy and dereliction crisis ravaging Irish towns and cities. Over the past four years, I have called for it to be used as accommodation for refugees or healthcare workers or, indeed, for it to be converted into homes by the Land Development Agency, LDA.
However, the LDA tells me it has not even been offered the site by the HSE and now the HSE is putting a portion of it on the private market, with apparently no consideration of the public good.
It is not just the HSE, as I say. Across the State, public bodies are sitting on properties that could be transformed into safe and secure accommodation and homes. There is a human cost to vacancy. When will the Taoiseach confront the epidemic of vacancy and dereliction, particularly in State-owned properties? When will he lead a co-ordinated national effort to deliver the homes people need?

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-04/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:35+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-04