Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-06 ============================================================ John Cummins (FG), Waterford I thank the Senator and assure her that supporting individuals and families experiencing or at risk of homelessness, including victims and survivors of domestic abuse, and utilising existing vacant and derelict buildings are absolute priorities for this Government. I thank Senator Comyn for raising this matter this afternoon. The response to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence is a cross-departmental and multi-agency issue, with overall policy co-ordinated by the Department of justice. Responsibility for the development and provision of services to support victims and survivors rests with the Minister for justice, working in conjunction with Cuan, the relevant statutory agency under the remit of that Department. However, the Government's new housing plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities, is an integrated housing and homelessness plan which aims to deliver 300,000 new homes by the end of 2030, including 72,000 social homes and 90,000 affordable homes. The Government is focused on making sure that everyone has access to good quality, secure homes that suit their needs. To achieve this, the largest ever housing budget in the history of the State has been secured in 2026, with in excess of €9 billion in capital funding through the Exchequer, the Land Development Agency and the Housing Finance Agency to support the delivery of social, starter and cost-rental homes and to bring existing vacant and derelict properties into use as homes. Under the new housing plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities, a national homelessness prevention framework is being developed within which homelessness can be prevented in a structured and planned way, with tailored prevention measures for each potential at-risk cohort, including victims and survivors of domestic violence. In addition, the Minister, Deputy Browne, is working with the Department of the Taoiseach and a range of key stakeholders to develop a child and family homelessness action plan. The plan will place particular emphasis on prevention measures, enhanced supports for children experiencing homelessness and measures to accelerate exits and reduce the time spent by children and their families in homeless emergency accommodation. The plan will also put in place additional supports for parents and expectant mothers who are experiencing homelessness in order to support entire families. It is anticipated that the plan will be published by end of June. Bringing existing vacant buildings back into use as homes is a priority for the Government and a key element of the new housing plan. Significant progress has been made in tackling vacancy. A key measure introduced is the vacant property refurbishment grant. It is providing substantial support to bring these properties into use as homes, with over 5,500 grants paid to date and 12,00 approvals across all our local authorities. Recognising the need to bring as many vacant properties as possible into use as homes, particularly in our towns and cities, as the Senator rightly identified, the new vacant above the shop grant has been introduced to bring these vacant upper floors into residential use. In addition, we have the compulsory purchase order, CPO, activation programme. Under that, local authorities are required to take a proactive and systematic approach to tackling vacancy. I am on record in this House and the Lower House as saying that some local authorities are doing excellent work in this space and using their CPO powers while others simply are not. To me, as Minister of State, that is unacceptable and is something I am communicating to the local authorities when I visit them as I travel around the country. We also have funding, through the urban regeneration development fund and through the social housing investment programme, the aim of which is to create social housing by all means, including above the shop. In some local authority areas, buy and renew and repair and use have been put to very good use. It is about a joined-up approach, thinking outside the box and putting them all together. I thank the Senator for raising this important matter. --- 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/2026-05-06/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:54+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-06