NEW FIGURES SHOW that 776 council homes have been lying vacant in the State for more than a year, a situation branded by one TD as “insulting”.

The data, obtained under a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, reveals that there are a total of 2,749 vacant council houses across the State at present.

Under laws introduced in 1990, every local council keeps a Derelict Sites Register which includes the sites subject to an annual levy of 7% of its market value for being in a “ruinous, derelict, dangerous or neglected condition”.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, today’s data shows Dublin topping the count for numbers of empty State-owned dwellings, with 750 local authority properties registered as unused across the capital’s four county councils, 265 of which have been vacant for up to a year.

Cork comes in second place with 495 total derelict council houses across the county, followed by Limerick with 220 such houses, while Kildare accounts for 129, according to the data.

The maintenance budget set aside for all these properties registered as vacant in the State amounts to €366 million in total, with Dublin occupying €214 million of the total national budget.

The Journal reported in March that the majority of the country’s county councils failed to collect money from other owners of derelict sites, as figures suggested that councils are owed more than €20 million in unpaid levies.

That data showed that just €604,621 in levies was collected by councils in 2023, despite over €5.6 million being owed to all 31 local authorities.

‘Broken promises’

Sinn Féin TD for Cork North Central Thomas Gould blames the problem on “broken promises” declared in the Government’s housing strategy.

“There is nothing more insulting to those impacted by the housing emergency than the sight of a perfectly good home left empty,” he said.

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“I am sick and tired of the government’s excuses and broken promises. They try to blame everyone but themselves.”

He added: “A Sinn Féin government would not stop until long-term vacancy in council homes had been ended.  We would cut the red tape and end the bureaucracy. We would do everything to ensure that nobody watches homes rot, while they cannot access secure accommodation.”

Clarification: The headline of an earlier version of this article did not include the detail that the number referred to local authority-owned homes.