Former Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, who chairs the European Housing Advisory Board, has urged the creation of dedicated vacant homes teams within every local authority to accelerate the refurbishment of empty properties, reports Breaking News.
“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, reports Breaking News.
“We need to actually hold and help those owners so that they can get through what is a complicated process,” he said.
Mr Ryan was commenting on findings from the Vacant to Vibrant Housing Alliance, which suggested that as many as 120,000 homes could be renovated in towns and cities nationwide, reports Breaking News.
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He said that analysis from across Europe showed Ireland was not alone in facing a housing crisis, with many existing buildings not being used effectively.
Recent figures on new housing construction show that targets are not being achieved, meaning the Government must consider alternative ways to increase housing supply, reports Breaking News.
He added that existing properties in the centres of villages, towns, and cities could deliver housing more quickly and at lower cost, while also offering environmental and social advantages.
“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,” reports Breaking News.
“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,” reports Breaking News.
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