Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council spent more than €200,000 bringing a vacant social home in Blackrock, south Dublin back into use last year.
The local authority said it spent €503,142 on “three major refurbishment properties” to re-let in 2024. This included the property in Blackrock, which was built in 1957 and had the same tenant for 63 years.
A unit in Glasthule, built in 1934 with the same tenant for 39 years, cost €146,414. The other property was in Dún Laoghaire, constructed in 1932, had same tenant for 49 years, and cost €138,581.
“They were all major refurbishments due to the condition of the properties when they were handed back to the council,” a spokeswoman for the council said.
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“One required an existing extension to be demolished and rebuilt, all required works such as electrical rewiring upgrade works, energy upgrades works, insulation works, external roof works, full new kitchen installations and replastering of internal roofs and walls.”
[ Intimidation in a Dublin suburb, and the derelict house being used as stablesOpens in new window ]
The Department of Housing and Local Government said it is committed to supporting local authorities implementing an asset management ICT (information and communications technology) system to allow for “strategic and informed planned maintenance work programmes” supported by stock condition surveys.
“This approach will ensure that homes are maintained on an ongoing basis and not only maintained at the time of vacancy in some cases after a significant period of time,” it said.
“This will result in less works required on re-let, less costs associated and ensure homes are turned around as quick as possible.”
The Programme for Government commits to introducing a new voids programme, to implement long-term strategic reforms and mandate local authorities to establish voids frameworks to improve the turnaround of vacant social housing units.
However, the department said there is “no set time frame in place” for the new programme.
Void is the term given to when tenants vacate houses or flats, either transferring to somewhere more suitable or leaving to purchase their own property. The death of a tenant or a marital breakdown can also result in a void unit.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, which covers Blackrock, Dundrum, Dún Laoghaire, Sandyford, Killiney, Shankill and Stillorgan, said it re-tenanted 111 properties last year as part of what it would consider to be “normal re-let processes”. The average cost per property was €31,190.
“The length of time a property remains vacant depends on the condition of the property when it is returned to the council and the amount of information required to complete the allocation process,” it added.
“Every effort is being made to ensure properties are tenanted as quickly as possible. In 2025, re-let works have been completed on 39 properties to date at an average cost of €17,580.”
The council’s average re-let time for vacant properties in 2023 was 23 weeks.
Dublin City Council said the average cost of refurbishing void units in 2024 was €44,000. It said when a unit becomes vacant it allows two weeks for tenants to remove any personal belongings, a 10- to 16-week period to revamp the property as well as a two-week period to allow a new tenant to inspect the property and move in.
Fingal County Council said it refurbished and brought back into use 79 voids, excluding energy efficiency retrofit works, at a total cost of €1.7 million (or an average of €21,519 per unit). The average re-let period was 33 weeks.
South Dublin County Council said it allocated 184 re-let properties at an average turnaround time of 20.64 weeks last year.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin hit out at local authorities for the delay in releasing vacated properties to those on waiting lists in the Dáil last month.
Mr Martin said local authorities take “too long to release a home that has been vacated”.
“It can take sometimes months or a year for the local authority fill the same house again, and they cite all sorts of reasons, and it’s not good enough,” he said. “And now they’re looking for more and more grants to fill those voids.”
He said those homes “should be filled fairly quickly, within a week or two of a house being vacated, unless there’s some structural issue” but added that the majority of cases did not involve structural issues.
