Eamon Ryan says every local authority should have a vacant homes team

Vivienne Clarke

Former Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, who is chair of the European Housing Advisory Board, has called for the establishment of vacant homes teams for every local authority to speed up the process whereby vacant properties can be refurbished.

“Every council now has a vacant homes officer, but I think that needs to be a team rather than an individual. And we need to work with people who have such properties to bring them through the complicated administrative process, their design and building process, and the grant process,” he told RTÉ radio’s Today with David McCullagh show.

“We need to actually hold and help those owners so that they can get through what is a complicated process.”

Ryan was responding to a report from the Vacant to Vibrant Housing Alliance which indicated that up to 120,000 homes could be refurbished in towns and cities across the country.

The analysis from across Europe was that Ireland was not alone in having a housing crisis. Existing buildings were not being effectively used, he said.

The latest figures of new builds indicated that targets were not being met so the government needed to look for alternative means to provide housing. There were existing premises in the centre of villages, towns and cities that could provide accommodation “quicker, cheaper, with better environmental and social benefits.

“People will know there's a vacant property refurbishment grant. Now there's about 16,000 people have applied for that, about 12,000 approved, about 4,500 actually done, but we need to expand that and do a lot more.

“We have a Living Cities Initiative introduced 11 years ago now, but it hasn't delivered the scale of refurbishment we need because it's complicated, because you've complicated different building standards, different fire regulations, disability rules, all sorts of other rain difficulties that makes it complicated.

“It's more expensive than people maybe originally thought, but it's not as expensive as building new because that has to be serviced and provided with power.”