Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation Dail Éireann — 2025-12-11 ============================================================ Thomas Gould (SF), Cork North-Central A total of 93 families in Cork will spend their Christmas in homeless accommodation. Five of them will have been in homeless accommodation for over three years. This year, the Government will spend €21 million housing these families while there are hundreds of boarded-up council houses in Cork that could be turned around. These are places where children could have a proper Christmas and hang stockings on the chimney, knowing that Santa will come down it. However, the Minister's Government will not reopen the voids scheme. Will the Minister or his Government give a commitment now? We are two weeks out from Christmas and families are homeless. Will the Minister commit to opening and funding the voids scheme to give these families a home this year instead of wasting money on emergency accommodation when it should be put into homes? --- 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/2025-12-11/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-11