Vacant Properties
Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-15
============================================================

John Cummins (FG), Waterford

I thank the Senator for raising this important matter and giving me an opportunity to update the House. I assure the Senator that the Government absolutely recognises the importance of tackling vacancy and dereliction and we continue to be committed to addressing these issues through a range of measures and with the support of all key stakeholders, including our local authorities.
In particular, the Government has invested in the provision of dedicated vacant homes officers and town regeneration officers, working with local authorities specifically on vacancy and dereliction-related issues locally. These staff operate in conjunction with wider local authority teams that place an emphasis on town regeneration and bringing under-utilised buildings back into use. Networking and best practice initiatives for these staff and teams are provided my Department and the national town centre first office to support more effective service provision at a local level for citizens.
These local authority staff are key to enabling the public to access a wide range of funding streams now available in tackling vacancy and dereliction, such as the vacant property refurbishment grant, which provides up to €50,000 for the refurbishment of vacant properties for use as homes and up to €70,000 where the property is derelict.
This scheme has recently been expanded with a new vacant above-the-shop grant of up to €135,000 to support the bringing of above-the-shop vacant spaces into residential units where a commercial element is remaining at ground-floor level. An expert advice grant of up to €5,000 is also now available towards professional advice on the conversion of such former commercial floor spaces into residential units. That element - the €5,000 grant - speaks a lot to what the Senator has raised in regard to having the expert advice to ensure we are being delicate with these buildings in bringing them back into productive use. As the Senator rightly pointed out, we have a resource difficulty in expertise, and the thought within the Department is that this grant allows the person who is doing it the flexibility to be able to get that advice on board as they need it.
Support is also being provided through call 3 of the urban regeneration and development fund, URDF, which consists of a €150 million revolving fund for our local authorities to acquire vacant or derelict properties and sites for reuse or sale. The fund is replenished from the proceeds received from the sale or reuse of properties, allowing a rolling fund for local authorities to tackle vacancy and dereliction.
We also have a compulsory purchase order, CPO, activation programme, which was launched by my Department in April 2023. This programme supports a proactive and systematic approach by local authorities to the reuse of vacant and derelict properties. It also includes guidance for local authorities to actively use their legislative powers, including under the Derelict Sites Act, to acquire vacant and derelict properties and to use CPO powers where engagement with the owners has been unsuccessful. Some local authorities are doing this to great effect, while other local authorities certainly need to step up their game in this space. That is one of the areas I focus on when I visit local authorities across the country.
There are obviously a few other elements such as the town centre first heritage revival scheme, THRIVE, and the commercial-to-residential exemption from planning, which I extended before Christmas up to the end of 2028. The latest data on that indicate that 3,500 homes up to the end of 2024 have been created with that exemption in place. I am bringing forward further exemptions from planning, all with the goal of streamlining our planning system and removing red tape from it so as to be able to free up planning resources within our local authorities.

---

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/seanad/2026-04-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-15