The Minister for Housing says all local authorities have received additional housing staff.
His comments, earlier today, come the same week that Cork County Council said that it never told by the Department that extra funding is available to hire more Vacant Home Officers.
The council had been criticised by Cork East TD David Stanton for not availing of the funding.
CSO data estimates that there were nearly 167,000 vacant houses and apartments in the country - equating to 1 in every 25.
Minister for Housing and Local Government Darragh O'Brien was speaking at the opening of his party's 'Housing for All' conference earlier today:
"All of the local authorities have received additional staff. Over 300 new housing staff in each of the local authority areas. And obviously, we encourage them to do a lot more. Some of the Local Authorities have very good pipelines and delivery. We expect to do more this year in social housing delivery. Much of what we have seen in the year of 'Housing for All' is a step change in housing delivered. If you look at, between social and affordable housing, that the state's basically backing between 40 and 50% of all the homes being built here in the state and we want to expand that further".
