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	EMPTY council houses are not being re-let as soon as possible, swelling the numbers of people in private rented accommodation and resulting in a loss of rental income.</h2>
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		<span class="CTXempty" style="margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; text-decoration: inherit !important; float: none !important;">A report from the Department of the Environment says that&nbsp;<span id="link1" name="link1" style="margin: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1px !important; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 1em; height: auto; cursor: pointer; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 153, 0); text-decoration: underline !important; color: rgb(0, 153, 0) !important;">local</span>authorities are failing to make best use of their social housing stock, and are not inspecting dwellings regularly.</span></p>
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		<span class="CTXempty" style="margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; text-decoration: inherit !important; float: none !important;">The findings come after the&nbsp;<span id="link0" name="link0" style="margin: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1px !important; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 1em; height: auto; cursor: pointer; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 153, 0); text-decoration: underline !important; color: rgb(0, 153, 0) !important;">Irish</span>Independent yesterday revealed that more than 111,000 people are now on council housing waiting lists.</span></p>
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		Councils own some 130,809 houses and apartments, but almost 3pc &ndash; or 11,770 &ndash; are empty at any one time.</p>
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		The &#39;Management and Maintenance of Vacant Dwellings in Local Authorities&#39; is a follow-up report to one issued in May 2011, which made recommendations on how to best utilise the stock of council houses.</p>
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		It found that many of the 27 recommendations were not being implemented by councils.</p>
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		The council with the worst record is Cork city, where just 25.9pc of recommendations were implemented. The best-performing were Fingal (88.9pc) and Dublin city (77.8pc).</p>
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		It takes an average of more than 20 weeks to complete repairs before the unit can be re-let, and the report says this could be sharply reduced if inspections were carried out of all homes.</p>
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		<a href="http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/income-lost-as-councils-take-too-long-to-let-homes-29474565.html">http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/income-lost-as-councils-take-too-long-to-let-homes-29474565.html</a></p>
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