Six councils, including Cork City, have failed to hire vacant homes officer

Cork City Council is among six local authorities which have failed to appoint a vacant homes officer six months after being ordered to do so.

Labour housing spokeswoman, Jan O’Sullivan, has hit out at the “lack of urgency” in filling the positions given the housing and homeless crisis.

“We need to get to the bottom of why there are nearly 200,000 vacant homes around Ireland, and how many can be brought back into use to deal with the housing crisis.

“Dedicated vacant homes officers are best placed to go out and assess these properties on behalf of local authorities and then set the wheels in motion to go about acquiring them,” she said.

Responding to a parliamentary question from Ms O’Sullivan, Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy confirmed that Cork City, Sligo, Monaghan, Louth, and Galway county and city councils have yet to appoint officers despite being directed to do so last August.

In a bid to tackle the homeless problem Mr Murphy said he requested that local authorities designate vacant home officers to co-ordinate local actions to address vacancies and to undertake local vacancy surveys to identify “vacancy hot-spot areas” and properties that can be quickly brought back into residential use.

Ms O’Sullivan said there had been a significant rise in the numbers of homeless people in Cork and Galway in the past year, and both areas had been designated as rent-pressure zones: “It is just not acceptable that there is such a lack of urgency in local and national government when so many people are homeless and there are homes that can be brought back into use.”

Meanwhile, when he appeared before the Oireachtas housing committee yesterday, Mr Murphy was accused of trying to hide homeless figures by publishing them late at night or on bank holidays.

Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Broin said he believed the figures had been “buried at times when there was less media scrutiny”.

However, Mr Murphy said that there was no evidence for that.

In the Dáil, People Before Profit TD, Richard Boyd Barrett, said many people were “puzzled and infuriated” by the Taoiseach’s comments earlier this week when he suggested first-time buyers could get help from their parents to raise deposits.

“The bank of mum and dad does not exist. It is mythical except for a pampered few in this country.

“Even if my couple could get to the stage of having a deposit and a mortgage, where would they find a house for €270,000 in Dublin? The answer is ‘nowhere’,” Mr Boyd Barrett said.

Tánaiste Simon Coveney said Mr Boyd Barrett should not dismiss the efforts being made by the Government including a new low-interest mortgage scheme for those who have been refused loans from the commercial banks.

He said there are 600 houses for sale in Dublin priced at under €250,000 according to daft.ie.

Mr Coveney said: “The Government is not pretending that any one initiative will solve the housing problem.

“It will be a combination of a whole series of things.”