Galway city has been plagued with vacant sites and vacant homes for the last number of years. Just last week, I walked through Galway city centre and took a look at the number of vacant homes. At the same time, thousands of people are on the housing waiting list, thousands of people are paying huge rents and thousands of people are locked out of homeownership. Just this week, we saw the launch of the national development plan. One of its themes is about moving people and seeing populations grow in cities outside of Dublin and in rural areas. However, it has very little on specifics regarding infrastructure, be they roads, the western rail corridor or whatever. On the issue of vacant homes specifically, we cannot continue in Galway city to see these vacant homes and vacant sites lying idle, while so many people are locked out of secure accommodation. Can the Minister commit to stop this?

It is a fair question. There is an issue with vacancy right across the country. One of the pathways in the Housing for All programme deals with vacancy. We will be providing significant funding to our local authorities to deal with vacancy through the Croí Cónaithe cities and towns funds, as well as through a new compulsory purchase order, CPO, programme. We will manage that through the Housing Agency, that is, to compulsorily purchase some of those vacant properties to get them back into use for first-time buyers. In addition, we will increase and expand the repair and leasing scheme, which I have already brought forward and is now in place. We have a detailed plan with regard to vacancy, backed by real finance, in Housing for All. That will apply to every city, town and village right across the country. There is no question but that current, existing stock that is not in use can be put to productive use. I intend to do that.