Vacant Properties
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-29
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Pearse Doherty (SF), Donegal

We are talking about apples and oranges here. The Minister is talking about a derelict properties tax. That is fine; a property that is derelict is visibly derelict. We are talking about vacant homes. We are talking about how the whole idea of this tax is to get homes into usage and to penalise people for leaving properties vacant and not using them in the middle of a housing crisis. We have argued time and again for many years with the Government to introduce this tax and to make it stronger and its rates higher.
Crucially, we cannot have the situation where the Central Statistics Office, CSO, says there are 70,000 vacant properties. I accept that not all of the 70,000 would fall under the scope of this tax because of some of the caveats and exemptions that are there, but it is not the case that there are only 2,361 vacant properties across the State. It is just not the case. This has been going on, and what I have not heard from the Minister is how he is going to fix it. He is telling me that he is going to introduce a different tax for a different type of property. That is not what I am interested in at the minute. I am interested in the tax that has existed for the last four years. It is simply not working. Has the Minister any proposals to actually fix this? Are we going to see anything in the budget that is going to fix this or is the Minister just going to leave it the way it is?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-29