Housing Schemes
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-26
============================================================

Alan Dillon (FG), Mayo

I thank Deputy Gibney for raising this important matter and giving me the opportunity to update the Dáil on behalf of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Critically, the management and maintenance of local authority social housing stock is, first and foremost, a matter for the respective local authority, in this instance Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, in accordance with section 58 of the Housing Act 1966. This includes activating and funding pre-letting repairs to vacant properties, implementing a planned maintenance programme and carrying out responsive repairs. Local authorities must also ensure their tenanted properties comply with the requirements of the Housing (Standards For Rented Houses) Regulations 2019.
Notwithstanding what Deputy Gibney has outlined on the statutory obligations, the Department also provides annual funding to local authorities, including Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, to complement the local authorities' own management and maintenance programmes. This funding is provided through the recent planned maintenance and voids programme, the energy efficiency retrofit programme and the disabled persons grant programme. These programmes, together with the Department's local authority estate regeneration programme, will provide €260 million to complement local authority social housing management and maintenance activities this year. This is an increase of almost €60 million on the amount provided to these programmes in 2025.
Ultimately, the selection of homes and the nature and prioritisation of works for inclusion in the programme is a matter for the local authority itself. In the past 12 years, the Exchequer has provided more than €31 million to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council for its own social housing management and maintenance programme.
A further €6.3 million will be provided by the Department in 2026. This includes €1.3 million for the revised planned maintenance and voids programme, which was rolled out to the local authority earlier this month and will support bringing more than 70 vacant social homes back into productive use in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. Critically, the new programme will build on the strong progress made in tackling local authority vacancy levels. As I mentioned in reply to Deputy Sherlock earlier, we have the enhanced buy and renew scheme which will be coming on stream in the coming weeks, the vacant refurbishment grant, and significant funding through the URDF for vacant and derelict properties.
The planned maintenance and voids programme now takes a more evidence-informed planned maintenance approach and the local authority has updated its management systems, with a further €4.2 million being provided through the Department of climate, energy and the environment through the SEAI retrofit programme. That will see an additional €800,000 being fed through the disabled persons' grant programme.
The management and maintenance of housing stock is a statutory requirement and a matter for the local authority itself. My Department will continue to complement the efforts of the local authority through a strategic approach to ensure that the management and maintenance of such stock is kept to a high standard.

---

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