Amid the housing crisis in Ireland, a new list prepared by the UK website money.co.uk creates fury among common people. In the list of countries, Ireland ranks number 10 globally for the highest proportion of vacant homes. According to a report by The Irish Times, the list was prepared after analysing the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data.
Ireland stands at the 10th position in the list with 9.1% of the country’s total housing stock lying vacant. It means there are 183,312 units in the country which are not used.
According to the data, there are 5,873 people live in Ireland homeless. If we give each of them with one of these homes, only 3.2% of these vacant homes would be needed to end the homelessness in this country.
The vacant homes in Ireland include holiday homes and more than a third of the properties classified as vacant here are owned by elderly people.
“Homelessness is undoubtedly a huge global problem,” the report said. “With an estimated 100 million people currently homeless, the fact there are millions of homes around the world lying empty is even more shocking.”
In the global list, Japan ranks 1st with 13.6 per cent of its 60 million homes staying vacant. Japan is followed by Hungary (12.3%), the US (11.1%), Brazil (11.1%) and Finland (10.7%). Counties such as France (7.8%) and the UK (0.9%) are far behind Ireland in terms of vacant houses.
The list is an eye opener for the authorities in the country and emphasises the need to introduce long debated vacant property tax.