Simon Coveney: Need to speed up council houses turnover

Housing Minister, Simon Coveney, says there needs to be a faster turnover of Council housing stock, and that vacated council houses should not be left sitting void for anything longer than ‘a number of weeks.’

“We’ve made huge progress in relation to the voids issue in the last two years, in Dublin, Cork and Galway,” Minister Coveney said.

“Last year there were 3,600 voids brought back into use and the Government put a special fund in place for Cork City Council and the Dublin councils to actually make sure that that happened. So the percentage of voids in terms of council houses has reduced dramatically, and to be fair to the management and the councillors in Cork City Council, they’ve done a good job on that,” he told Cork 96FM’s ‘Opinion Line’.