Department of Housing take huge step to tackle housing crisis in Ireland

Minister for Housing, Eoghan Murphy, unveiled on Monday morning, a plan to progress the delivery of vacant homes back into use.

While a new vacanthomes.ie website will give property owners information as to what to do to bring their house back into use.

Maintenance and upgrading of properties and faster turnaround of vacant social housing stock and also quicker identification of new tenants.

The chief executives of Carlow and Kilkenny County Council's will be getting a letter from Housing Minister, Eoghan Murphy today.

Nearly 80,000 vacant homes were identified back in April 2016 during the Census.

Minister Murphy says: "Increasing supply isn't just about building new homes, it's about managing the stock that we already have that's not being used".

Murphy said he is now in talks with the Attorney General, the Minister of Finance, Paschal Donohoe, and the Revenue Commissioners to establish how quickly the new measures can be introduced to encourage homeowners to get their second property back on the market.

"My department stands ready to offer assistance, advice and funding, where appropriate, to start this important work, which will ultimately feed into the Vacant Home Strategy later this Autumn".

The local authorities will also be asked to update the minister on their housing plans and bring solutions aimed at addressing the problem to the summit meeting.

"We will come with measures, incentives to help you bring that home back into use". "It's unacceptable that living space in city centres remains unused at a time of a national housing crisis", Cowen added.

However, Murphy said the homeless crisis would be a lot worse had the government not rolled out the housing strategy previous year.