An ambitious new plan to tackle the housing crisis in Cork has been announced.

Sinn Féin has launched its Vacant Homes for Cork strategy, which will see the Department of Housing work with Cork City Council to get families and individuals into vacant houses. 

This new strategy comes as approximately 9,392 homes lie vacant in Cork, while only one part-time vacant homes officer is employed.

Sinn Féin TD for Cork North Central Thomas Gould has condemned the government's attempts to get people into vacant homes.

"Instead of filling these homes with families and people, they are sitting boarded-up and empty," he said. "Sinn Féin has a plan to bring these homes back into housing stock because it's time to get serious about solving the Housing Crisis.

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"The National Vacant Housing Reuse Strategy 2018-2021 has failed Cork. We have not seen the promised benefits and we are still in a city full of empty houses."

Outlining the how the new strategy will be implemented, Gould added: "We would see social houses renovated and given out as soon as they become vacant in a fast-tracked voids scheme. We would fund local authorities to conduct five-year rolling preventative maintenance audits on all social housing stock.

"We would conduct a complete audit of all vacant stock and set multi-annual targets for the return of these. We would work with the Departments of Health and Housing to bring some homes in the Fair Deal scheme back into use in a fair and equitable way.

"Each of these potential homes in Cork city and county could have children playing in the back garden, dinners cooked in the kitchen and a family growing together under the roof. Instead they are left empty and rotting."