Vacant Properties Dail Éireann — 2026-03-26 ============================================================ Marie Sherlock (LAB), Dublin Central It is very welcome to hear this update. If I interpret correctly what the Minister of State said, we are moving from a buy and renew scheme to a renew and purchase or renew and sale scheme. It is slightly turning it on its head. That is not a bad thing, but the critical point is the amount of money that will be allocated for these projects. We know that 40,000 units of Dublin housing stock was built before the 1940s. Much of this is redbrick stock and some of it is in areas of architectural conservation. There are real issues with regard to how we bring these houses back into use, short of demolishing them. My concern ultimately is that while the scheme is potentially very welcome, the question is how much the Department and the Custom House are going to put behind it. There has to be recognition here, and I would be the first to talk about how costly it is for the State to buy turnkey homes and how costly can be in terms of Part 5 purchases, which we support. This will also be costly in terms of bringing stand-alone housing back into use. We need to see greater thinking with regard to how it will be financed and, perhaps, the use of some of these homes. Could we turn a two-bedroom or three-bedroom house into two apartments or some such innovation? The reality is that we cannot continue to have these houses remaining derelict. I look forward to the day when the scheme will be announced. My appeal is that we make sure it is properly resourced. We look forward to the detail on the contractor-led approach in terms of who will take it up and how exactly it will be taken up. --- 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/2026-03-26/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:47+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-26