I too wish to be associated with the expressions of sympathy to the Murphy family on the senseless murder of Ashling Murphy. I support the cross-party and cross-group approach to the issue of violence against women.

I will raise a separate issue with the Taoiseach. The Northern and Western Regional Assembly has just published a report on regional vacancy and dereliction, which shows that 44,905 residential and commercial properties are empty in the five Connacht counties and the three Border counties of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan. This is one third higher than Ireland's total national annual housing requirement of 33,000 homes. There are whole streets in our towns and villages that have not had a football kicked on them in a generation. Some 40% of the vacant homes in this country are in these eight counties. Many of them are vacant family homes close to schools and services and also have 1,000 Mbps broadband outside their doors.

The housing crisis is not just about a lack of houses. It is also about our failure to have empty homes occupied by families, especially those in our towns and villages. The fact is that if these homes were occupied, it would have an immediate dividend to the State, rural Ireland and homeless families. I have been making this point for some years. Thankfully, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and the Government have taken on board my suggestions. A whole section of the new Housing for All strategy is focused on how we can bring families back into empty houses throughout our country. However, that strategy was published last September and we still await its implementation.

To take County Roscommon as an example, we have a perverse situation in that we have a vacancy rate of 14% and 4,090 empty homes in the county but just 18 homes for rent and 230 for sale, according to daft.ie. Local auctioneers have waiting lists of people looking to buy or rent family homes. In east Galway, where demand for housing is considerably higher, many of our villages do not have access to any wastewater treatment facilities. In fact, in a number of instances, raw sewage is running through the streets.

There needs to be a strategic approach to addressing this problem, rather than trying to dump responsibility back on councils, which have not been able to utilise the repair and leasing scheme to bring vacant properties in need of repair back into use for social housing or repair the 3,900 local authority houses that remain empty throughout our country.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I welcome the report from the Northern and Western Regional Assembly on vacancy and dereliction based on its analysis of the region. I did not realise Deputy Naughten had written a chapter in the Housing for All strategy but he is correct about the section that deals with the issue of vacant houses. There is a particular need, through a towns first policy, to get vacant or derelict houses back in play and to reconstruct them and enable their reconstruction. There are a number of ways in which we can do that. We can tax vacant properties to incentivise people to get them developed. We can create incentives, which we will, to help people to move towards refurbishing or bringing a house back into use as a home and residential property, which is the desired outcome, as well as creating activity within a town and village.

The study concentrates on towns and villages throughout the north west. I would like to engage with the Deputy to go through it in greater detail in terms of the models used and so on and to identify those houses and see, on a more micro level, whether we can get some of these issues dealt with on the ground.

There has been a range of schemes prior to Housing for All - the repair-and-lease scheme being one - that do not seem to have got the desired return or output.

The interesting news I heard just before I came into the House was that in 2021 there were 30,724 commencement notices. There is significant evidence of the construction sector really picking up. We had two lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 that affected construction output, but there has been such a significant bounceback that we have had 30,724 commencements. That augurs well. It is the highest number for quite a long time. That is part of the approach.

In terms of the rejuvenation of the regions - the north-west being one - we need a targeted, focused policy in terms of enabling vacant houses that have been described in this report to be brought back into use for families or for people generally who are either on the housing list or who are in search of affordable housing. There is a range of measures in Housing for All that can enable us to do that.

In terms of local authority and social housing, since this Government came into office, 5,500 social homes have been brought back into use over 18 months. These would be the typical local authority voids and that is through dedicated funding. Some 1,500 void homes are to be remediated and brought back into use this year. Those are important measures to counter the level of vacancy that has been described in the report. Local authorities will have a significant role to play in this.

There are commitments to provide funding to local authorities to support the refurbishment of vacant properties in our towns and villages, as well as to compulsorily purchase vacant properties, but these provisions - in some guise - have been available up to now but have had limited impact. Despite the publication of the Housing for All pathway to maximise the efficient use of our existing housing stock last September, the Government passed the reforms to the nursing home fair deal scheme without addressing the treble tax on nursing home residents who wish to rent out their former family homes. Our towns, villages and rural areas will benefit from this plan but there is a need to follow through with the necessary actions, especially in the west, the north west and the Border counties where there are such very high vacancy rates.

I agree with the latter point in terms of those in nursing homes being able to make their houses available for rent. There have been issues - these have been argued to and fro - in terms of protecting people and safeguarding the rights of those who may be in nursing homes. That said, the overarching priority now is housing and the provision of all available units for the purposes of housing. Work is under way to resolve that issue.

That concludes Leaders' Questions.