The Government and its Minister with responsibility for housing in particular have indicated they want to end the housing crisis but there are vacant houses lying idle right across the State. A solution I have suggested for years, and which I put to the Minister last year, concerns these vacant properties. Currently, the Government puts out two calls per year for local authorities to refurbish vacant properties. There is a cap on the process and it is hampered by red tape and bureaucracy.

I call for a straightforward fast-track approach that would give local authorities the ability to get these vacant houses returned to the housing stock. They are a magnet for antisocial behaviour and dumping, destroying the communities they are in. Will the Tánaiste ask the Minister and his departmental officials whey they are stopping local authorities getting vacant properties back to the housing stock? It is breaking the hearts of people on housing waiting lists to look at this.

As the Deputy knows, there are different types of vacant housing. There are the types in the ownership of local authorities, and those that are not and are privately owned. Funding is available to local authorities to restore and renovate voids in their ownership in order to make them available for people on the housing list. That process has sped up a lot in the past couple of years and the councils have done a good job on that. With privately owned vacant houses, local authorities have compulsory purchase order powers. Some local authorities, including the Louth council, have done a really good job with those powers but others could do much better.