The approval of €25 million in State grants last year to landlords seeking to renovate vacant and derelict properties has been described as “shocking”.
The total value of Vacant Property Refurbishment Grants paid to people intending to let the renovated properties, an approach deemed as “affordable housing delivery” in official housing statistics, has risen by 234 per cent since 2024.
Introduced in 2022, the grant provides funding of up to €50,000 to renovate homes that have been vacant for at least two years. A top-up payment of up to €20,000 is also available for properties deemed to be derelict.
The scheme was expanded in May 2023 to include vacant and derelict homes intended for use as rental properties.
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Figures from the Department of Housing show the total value of vacant property refurbishment grants paid to landlords rose from €7.46 million in 2024 to €24.99 million in the first nine months of last year.
During an Oireachtas housing committee meeting on vacancy and dereliction late last year, TDs and Senators were told 28 per cent of the grants approved to date were for properties that would be rented out.
Such properties are classed as “affordable housing delivery” in official figures, though there is no requirement placed on successful applicants to charge an affordable rent.
Asked about their inclusion in affordable housing figures, Laura Behan, an assistant secretary at the Department of Housing, told committee members: “In reducing the cost of being able to make a property available for letting, one would assume that, as a result, the landlord is able to make the property more affordable than if a very high-cost refurbishment were required.”
Some 2,094 grants paid to owner-occupiers and those renting out renovated properties were included in affordable housing delivery figures for the first three quarters of last year, some 35 per cent of the total of 5,978 homes.
Social Democrats housing spokesman Rory Hearne, who obtained the figures through a parliamentary question, argued the classification of these properties as affordable housing is “deeply misleading”. He said there is no affordability requirement placed on a landlord who received the grant.
“The vacant property grant is not a form of affordable housing delivery and should not be used by Government to inaccurately inflate its affordable housing delivery figures and disguise its failure to deliver genuinely affordable homes,” he said.
Mr Hearne described the “huge increase” in public funds paid to landlords through the grants as “shocking”.
“Landlords could be getting upwards of €30 million a year to invest in their property and then rent it out at unaffordable, extortionate rents - using public money is outrageous.”
A department spokesman said the grant makes vacant and derelict properties “an affordable option for buyers and also for landlords” who, without it, would “not be able renovate and to turn these disused properties into homes”.
He said the grant has become a “vital affordable support”, particularly in rural areas, where the supply of new housing is “not readily available”.
The latest department figures show that more than 4,500 homes had been brought back into use under the wider scheme by the end of last year, at a cost of €246.9 million.
A total of 16,607 applications had been received up to December 31st last, with 12,096 approved.
Minister for Housing James Browne said the scheme is “tackling the scourge of dereliction and vacancy head-on ... In a time of housing shortage, leaving properties vacant is simply unacceptable.”
