Just three councils have 'key' vacant housing officers

Minister of State with responsibility for Local Government & Planning Peter Burke said the Housing for All plan includes a commitment  to ensure that the Vacant Homes Officers based in local authorities are all full-time posts. Photo: Michael O'Sullivan

Just three local authorities have a full-time vacant homes officer despite the Department of Housing saying the officers play a 'key' role in ensuring housing provision.

Since 2018, the Department of Housing has provided €50,000 per year to each local authority to support the work of a Vacant Homes Office including a Vacant Homes Officer. Yet just three local authorities, Clare, Dublin city and Galway county have allocated a full-time vacant homes officer.

Five other councils have two part-time staff: Mayo, Monaghan, Sligo, Cork county and Dublin county. Nonetheless all 31 local authorities claimed their funding up to June 2021 and the monies have been secured up to June 2022.

As part of Housing for All, the Government committed to a range of actions to address vacancy and ensure maximum use of all housing stock.

"This includes ensuring that the Vacant Homes Officers based in local authorities are all full-time posts," a parliamentary response from the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Peter Burke, states.

He said the provision of the central funding was so that local authorities could feed statistics into his department. The vacant homes office is central to that.

Each local authority prepares an action plan to tackle housing vacancy, but the Department does not "hold data on the amount of derelict housing units in the State," according to Mr Burke.

By March of this year, just 1,672 of the 5,600 homes promised via the three schemes set up to bring vacant properties back into use had been delivered.

Fine Gael TD David Stanton, who asked the Parliamentary question of Mr Burke, said of the vacant homes officers: "These officers have a number of jobs, identifying why the buildings are vacant and approaching owners and eventually bringing life into towns and villages and cities. The figures are stark, there's a lot of work to be done here."

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing says the government is "working with local authorities" in regards to vacant home officers. It also confirmed that Housing for All also contains a specific commitment to ensuring the vacant homes officer position is full-time.