Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Here is the frustrating thing. I am not complaining that a new scheme is not performing overnight. Some of these schemes are six or seven years old while others are only a few months old. Under the last and the current housing plan with social housing, we have had annual targets broken down by local authority and by delivery mechanism and it was very easy to track. That is also very helpful to ensure that local authorities and the Department are doing what they are meant to be doing. We do not get the same clarity with affordable housing delivery and vacancy. Even though there are reporting mechanisms, it is exceptionally difficult to know where they all are and to track them. What I would really like is not unlike the social housing progress pipeline progress report, which is a brilliant report. I would even suggest that we do not need it four times a year. Twice a year would be sufficient and less resource-intensive for the Department. It would be great if there was a vacancy report twice a year where all that data was collated. You could do it in a single page or two pages to say we have seven or so schemes, we have targets for some though not all of those schemes and here is the delivery. If we do not have that, it is impossible to know whether the Cathaoirleach's more optimistic interpretation of recent events or my more pessimistic interpretation is evidenced. It is a growing criticism of the reporting mechanisms, and I am not being critical of individual members of staff because they work very hard, that it is really difficult to track affordable housing delivery and vacancy. Even if it is possible to report to this committee once a year just with that spreadsheet, it would be really be helpful.

I do want to talk about the voids programme because we have not talked about it to date. Last year, the claim was that more than 2,200 local authority voids were brought back into use. I recommend that the Department be a bit more accurate in reporting that information. The vast majority of those voids are not voids. They are casual re-lets whereby local authorities require additional funding from the Department to ensure they can bring them back into use. That is not a void in terms of how the voids programme was originally designed. The original programme introduced by Alan Kelly was about identifying long-term vacant properties and voids and bringing them back into use. I do not want to use the word "honest" because that suggests people are being dishonest and I know they are not being dishonest but there is a big difference between a casual re-let and bringing a long-term void or vacant site back into use. That needs to be properly reflected in the data because otherwise, it sounds like 2,500 council properties that were sitting around empty for a long period of time, not unlike vacant or derelict properties, are brought back into use. Is there any intention to make it much clearer when that is reported how many are casual re-lets versus long-term voids? I know there is no definition of long-term void at the moment. It used to be 12 months and then it was six months. They are not the same thing.