Derelict Sites
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-19
============================================================

James Browne (FF), Wexford

The Deputy seems to be under a basic misapprehension about how the grant works. A property does not have to be disconnected from electricity to get the grant. Therefore, the CSO statistics might be correct, but they do not reflect the argument or opinion the Deputy is putting forward. The conclusion he is drawing from them is incorrect. No one is disputing CSO statistics, but the Deputy's conclusion is incorrect because the connections do not reflect how many vacant properties have been refurbished.
The facts are that 13,100 applications for the vacant property refurbishment grant have been approved and 5,300 to the value of almost €285 million have been paid out. If that is not a measure of the success of the scheme, I do not know what is. This has been an extremely popular-----

---

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/2026-05-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-19