I had more or less finished what I was saying, having addressed the various issues involved. For example, Deputy Broughan asked about the status of the legislation on the guidelines. We will update the guidelines because of this Bill; therefore, we will take account of the points made in this debate.
Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed)
Debate resumed on amendment No. 4:
In page 11, between lines 4 and 5, to insert the following:
"9. The Minister may by regulations prepare a code of conduct on the management of rent arrears by housing authorities.".
- (Deputy Thomas P. Broughan).
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
As Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan is not present, amendments Nos. 5 and 6 cannot be moved.
Amendments Nos. 5 and 6 not moved.
Amendments Nos. 7, 9 and 10 are cognate and may be discussed together.
I move amendment No. 7:
In page 14, line 21, to delete "10 working days" and substitute "21 working days".
Amendment No. 6 in the name of Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan had the same idea as this one which addresses the time limits in section 2. Many believe a ten day period is too short. In amendment No. 8 Deputy Dessie Ellis proposes a period of one month.
My amendment aims to offer tenants, particularly those at risk of losing their homes under the section 2 process, more time to manage the issue. Most Deputies who have reflected on the Bill believe ten working days is too short. In terms of social protection, for example, we are used to a 21 day period for appeals.
Section 12 relates to proceedings initiated by the housing authority to recover possession in circumstances where a household has breached a tenancy agreement. A tenant and family losing a home is a matter of such grave importance that an appropriate amount of time must be afforded to allow people to prepare for proceedings in the District Court.
As the Minister of State knows, it is critical that fair procedures be guaranteed under all legislation. The principle of equality of arms in legal proceedings must also be respected in order that tenants have adequate opportunities to obtain legal advice and have representation. In Focus Ireland's submission on the general scheme of the Bill it highlighted the short timeframe of ten working days. That timeframe has not been changed. I understand Focus Ireland has called for at least 30 working days, which is longer than one month. I propose 21 working days which is in line with Deputy Dessie Ellis's proposal and would afford a person subject to proceedings under section 12, 13 or 17 approximately one month in which to prepare for them.
Section 13 relates to the recovery of possession of dwellings that are unlawfully occupied. The minimum notice period to be afforded by the housing authority to the person or persons occupying the dwelling is ten working days.
Section 17 relates to the recovery of possession of local authority dwellings in circumstances where the tenants have died and the properties are occupied by persons not entitled under the Bill to become tenants. The minimum notice period in this regard is also ten working days. This tiny period is particularly unfair, as the substantive provisions of section 17 could directly affect family members who have suffered a bereavement, a difficult time in their lives.
The Northside Community Law Centre which provided me with a briefing on the Bill and its submission on the general scheme has rightly pointed out that there is a gap in the law, in that section 17 is silent on what should happen in circumstances where a person's application to succeed in a tenancy is, on the one hand, refused and, on the other, the District Court judge handling proceedings taken under section 17 refuses to grant an application by a housing authority to recover possession of the dwelling. There appears to be a lacuna in the law in circumstances where the local authority does not succeed in the District Court. The law centre has asked what are the obligations of the local authority in such cases. Perhaps the Minister of State might accept my amendment or introduce another to close this apparent gap.
There is a strong feeling the ten day periods outlined in these sections are too short for justice to be done and proper preparations to be made for court cases. The Minister of State should reconsider them.
I support Deputy Thomas P. Broughan in this instance, although even a 21 day period would be a little short. A period of one month would be fairer. Ten working days to react is very short.
Ten working days - two weeks - is too short for someone in this stressful position, regardless of the reasons for being in it in the first place. Tenants face all sorts of issues, for example, difficulties with language, literacy or addiction. Some will face the threat of eviction and homelessness. Given everything that this entails, I would opt for a period of 15 days.
I generally agree that the length of time is too short, but I qualify this remark by pointing out that the reasons matter. For example, a succession issue is different from squatting. It can be a different scenario where there is an unfairness to other people who would qualify ahead of those who have squatted.
The ten days is a minimum, not a maximum, period. I will be advising housing authorities that, generally speaking, they should give longer notice than the minimum period but occasionally there will be cases where the minimum notice only can be given because of the necessity for the housing authority to move quickly to repossess the dwelling.
Section 62 of the Housing Act 1966, which is being replaced by sections 12, 13 and 17, does not specify any minimum notice period for the housing authority's warrant application. It is worth noting also that each of the possession proceedings covered by the amendment includes provision for the court to adjourn the proceedings as it thinks fit. The court can adjourn the proceedings if it believes more times is needed, with or without conditions, and it could use this power where a tenant claims that he or she was not given sufficient time to prepare for the hearing of the possession application.
I refer to a Supreme Court case, Dublin City Council v. Fennell in 2005, in which there was an observation in the court that section 62 of the Housing Act 1966 had survived constitutional and judicial scrutiny up to that point not least because of the obvious needs of a housing authority to be able to manage effectively and control its housing stock without being unduly restricted or fettered while so doing. The same considerations apply to the possession proceeding now proposed, and that is why, in the case of a breach of a tenancy agreement such as anti-social behaviour that has serious detrimental effects on the quality of life of other people in the locality, section 12(3)(b) provides that a housing authority is required to give notice of a possession order application to the tenant concerned not later than the time it makes the application.
I stress that this is a minimum, not a maximum, period and that there are some cases where the local authority needs to move quickly and that the court can, if it deems it appropriate, provide for more time for the tenant.
I note the points the Minister makes about the minimum period. All of us would have concerns about this issue. One cannot represent people in respect of housing matters without quickly coming across the scourge of anti-social behaviour. The Minister mentioned the Supreme Court view on section 62, which as it turned out was a very important decision at the time. I still believe that, in justice, a longer minimum period would be better and for that reason I am pushing the amendment.
Question, "That the words proposed to be deleted stand", put and declared carried.
Amendment declared lost.
I move amendment No. 8:
In page 16, between lines 30 and 31, to insert the following:
“(12) Where the grounds for a possession application are anti-social behaviour, and in the opinion of the local authority a successful application may increase the chances of a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality of the dwelling to which the tenancy agreement relates in the intervening period between issue and repossession, the local authority concerned may petition the District Court to permit the local authority to act on the possession order no less than 1 month after the order is issued. The District Court will decide on this petition with due regard for ability of the tenant concerned to find alternative accommodation in this period and the potential detrimental effect on the household concerned.”.
Where a person is facing eviction for anti-social behaviour I am proposing that the local authority may petition the District Court to permit it to act on the possession order no less than one month after the order is issued. The time factor is important because the chances of these people finding alternative accommodation are affected. They might have children or other factors to take into account including schools etc. Providing for a period of one month after an order is issued is a sensible way of proceeding. We have argued whether the period should be ten or 21 days but if local authorities are allowed any flexibility, they will take the minimum period in cases where they should not. The Minister made an argument earlier that ten working days was the minimum period and that the local authorities could allow a longer period but it is dangerous to allow that to happen. That is the reason for my amendment because not enough time is being allowed for these families to find alternative accommodation.
I am generally supportive of more time being made available. That is a good idea, but I am concerned about one aspect of the amendment which refers to the District Court being required to have due regard for the ability of the tenant concerned to find alternative accommodation. All of us can speak only from our own experiences. The move by a local authority or a voluntary housing association to seek repossession happens only in extremis, and this legislation reflects the reality that a series of warnings is given and when the situation becomes serious, they move to repossess.
In cities and very large urban areas people have a degree of anonymity but in the towns and villages across rural Ireland, when it becomes inevitable that the local authority is seeking a repossession, that will become general knowledge in an area and the person being evicted will more than likely experience real difficulty in sourcing alternative accommodation because the alternative accommodation will be private rented accommodation, which is difficult to source in the first instance and will be inordinately more difficult to source when it is generally known to landlords that the person is being evicted because they have been involved in anti-social activity. The second and only other alternative is some type of hostel accommodation and I would be concerned that in putting that provision into the Bill we give the courts an opportunity to deprive local authorities of an activity of last resort where, in the public interest, somebody must be evicted. I fear we run the risk of somebody going into court and pleading their situation is so well known in the particular area that he or she will not be able to secure alternative accommodation. We have to think of the common good. We have to realise that where people are involved in the sale of drugs, for example, society has a right to say that there is a cost to be paid if, after repeated warnings, the tenant does not wise up and see the light. We have the right to defend the decent, honourable people who are living in these locations.
My experience has been a sad one because very often, when faced with the plight of anti-social behaviour, it is the victims, the decent people living in the area, who are driven out and, ultimately, their place is taken by people who are stronger and have the capacity to withstand the pressures. The participants in the anti-social behaviour, however, remain and carry on.
We are all trying to achieve a fair balance between giving people due warning while at the same time ensuring that where there are serious problems, the local authority has some powers to deal with them. In some ways this amendment is going in the opposite direction to the previous amendment in so far as the Bill states that the housing authority must give the household at least two months before requesting possession on foot of a court order whereas this amendment would allow them to move more quickly in cases of anti-social behaviour. It is a matter of judgment for all of us to decide the length of time that should be given to people in those circumstances. The previous amendment provided for more time to be given to them in the early stages of the process. In this amendment we are giving them less time after the possession order.
I would contend that, as provided for in the Bill, two months in respect of a request for possession on foot of a court order is the minimum period required by a household to make arrangements for alternative accommodation. I do not think it is reasonable to provide for a shorter period, even in exceptional cases. Also, if the household refuses to give up possession voluntarily to the housing authority, the District Court must make an execution order whereby possession is effected by a sheriff, which is a process that inevitably takes time. I believe one month is a little short in that it could result in people, who would otherwise have had two months to make alternative arrangements, becoming homeless. Unfortunately, I cannot accept the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment No. 9 has been already discussed with amendment No. 7. Is the amendment being pressed?
Yes. I move amendment No. 9:
In page 17, line 34, to delete "10 working days" and substitute "21 working days".
Question, "That the words proposed to be deleted stand", put and declared carried.
Amendment declared lost.
Is amendment No. 10, which has been already discussed with amendment No. 7, being pressed?
Yes. I move amendment No. 10:
In page 24, line 1, to delete "10 working days" and substitute "21 working days".
Question, "That the words proposed to be deleted stand", put and declared carried.
Amendment declared lost.
Amendments Nos. 11 to 13, inclusive, are related and may be discussed together by agreement.
I move amendment No. 11:
In page 28, between lines 16 and 17, to insert the following:
"(c) at the time of making its application for an excluding order, or as soon as possible thereafter, a housing authority shall notify the Child and Family Agency of the nature of the application concerned.",".
Amendment No. 11 provides that the local authority shall notify the Child and Family Agency of an excluding order as soon as possible. I note Deputy Murphy has tabled a broader amendment on the same subject.
Existing law in regard to excluding orders in respect of tenants engaged in anti-social behaviour makes reference to the housing authority when preparing to make an application for an exclusion order consulting the health board. I am concerned that the Bill in relation to particular matters provides only for consultation with the Health Service Executive and not the Child and Family Agency.
Obviously, people engaged in anti-social behaviour if persistently causing havoc must be excluded from areas. I agree with Deputy Ó Fearghaíl that the experience under existing law has been that very often it is the families who are well behaved citizens that end up leaving estates. Often the best of families have to flee having been subjected to grave anti-social behaviour. It is important to remember that under this Bill orders can be made against children aged over 12 years. The question that arises is what is to happen to those children? Obviously, that raises issues around child protection. It is necessary to include an expressed requirement that the housing authority notify the Child and Family Agency in circumstances where excluding orders are being made. Only recently Deputy Murphy made a powerful contribution during Leaders' Questions on the impact of the current housing crisis on children. We are currently, and rightly so, establishing an inquiry into the horrendous treatment of children in decades past in counties such as Galway and others throughout the country while currently before our eyes intelligent young children, whose families are facing eviction, are experiencing great fear and terror at the prospect of moving again or, perhaps, living in a hotel or guesthouse room. That is the current situation. The Government has a huge responsibility to the children of all of those families. In 30 or 40 years time Members of the then Dáil may be looking back and asking what we did about this matter. It is a serious issue.
Amendment No. 11 deals with the necessity for consultation with the Child and Family Agency. I know that like other Members the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, has vast experience in relation to this subject. I am sure she will agree that a multi-agency response to this issue is important. I note Deputy Murphy's amendment, of which I am supportive, goes a little further in this regard.
Amendment No. 13 seeks to amend 19(5)(a) which amends section 3A of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1997, as amended. Section 3A relates to exclusion orders preventing people from entering sites provided by local authorities. I understand section 3A was inserted into the 1997 Act by the Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act 1998, as amended. I support amendment No. 12 and hope that the Minister will be able to accept it and my two modest amendments.
This amendment was also tabled and discussed on Committee Stage, at which time the Minister said she did not want to direct the courts. I do not want matters to get to the point whereby the courts have to be directed. I think action has to happen at a much earlier stage. The lack of ability to manage local authority estates is part of the problem in that it is seen as exclusively a housing issue. The point I and others are trying to make is that it is more than a housing issue. Often the most vulnerable individuals in estates are being terrorised by a small number of minors. I know of people who have been forced out of estates because of anti-social behaviour. It is these families rather than those that are causing the problem who suffer the consequences.
There is a difficulty with minors, particularly when a group of them come together. If there are not consequences for those involved the problem becomes difficult to manage. A particular criticism of the housing associations is that they engage in cherrypicking of tenants, which option is not available to the local authorities as they are required to broadly comply with a points system, even in respect of a family that is known to be a difficult family. What often happens is that an estate that previously was stable becomes intolerable to live in following the allocation in that estate of a house to a particular family. The Minister of State is well aware of this.
Today is a seminal moment in terms of housing policy. While in theory the housing assistance payment provision makes things much easier administratively from the point of view of the landlord and tenant, in the absence of supply housing associations are being turned into housing support agencies and the private sector is where people will in future live. Anti-social behaviour and how it is managed becomes a different issue when that is the case. It may well be that it will become an academic issue because there will not be local authority estates in the future to house the 90,000 plus families on the housing waiting lists.
As I said, the authorities need to get involved in the management of behaviour at a much earlier stage. Eviction of families who are causing problems is simply moving a problem from one place to another. What we really need to do is address the problem at a much earlier stage. There must be a range of consequences for bad behaviour. It is often impossible for families to continue to live beside people who are out of control. There is a need for a multi-agency approach to this issue. That multi-agency approach must include the Child and Family Agency and Garda junior liaison officer.
It may well be that health service training programmes are required. I refer to tenant-management systems. It may well be that courses could be run for tenants in order that they gain an understanding of the problems visited on their neighbours. I would prefer intervention at a much earlier stage, rather than going to the courts.
I apologise for not having been present to move amendment No. 5; I was speaking somewhere else at the time it was due to be moved. It is relevant in this instance because an exclusion order is sometimes needed against just one individual, not an entire family. Some of the earlier discussion was on the support mechanisms that could be put in place, depending on the age of the individual, in order that the ultimate step of eviction would not be reached. It is a matter of positive engagement and not trying to prevent due process or justice. It is a question of using as many supports as possible in this regard.
Let me explain exactly what an excluding order for a minor can and cannot do. Under an amendment to the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1997, included in the Bill, an excluding order cannot exclude a minor from the family home. This is critical. What it can do is exclude a minor from being in another house or place such as a green area or set of local shops where anti-social behaviour is known to take place. As responsible, statutory social landlords, it is appropriate for the housing authorities to have power to exclude minors who have engaged in anti-social behaviour from where such behaviour tends to happen or where there is an opportunity to indulge in it. The provision in question is essentially an estate management tool that does not have the effect of removing the minor concerned from his home or locality. I am sorry for using the word "his" as I am sure minors are not all male.
I recognise the point Deputies Catherine Murphy, Thomas P. Broughan and Maureen O'Sullivan are making, that is, that there are much wider issues than simply excluding a young person from a particular area. These issues need to be addressed holistically. We addressed this issue on Committee Stage, particularly in dealing with Deputy Catherine Murphy's amendment. We are developing communication protocols with the relevant agencies in regard to the Children Act 2001. I agree that we need to do a lot more in this regard. With regard to regeneration, in particular, there is a much more holistic approach to the areas in question which, by and large, are local authority housing estates. There is a very strong social element to regeneration, in addition to the physical element. These are the models we must consider. We see them in RAPID areas and in other provisions.
We need to see much more of the type of engagement described, but I am not accepting the amendments because they are specific to the tool of being able to exclude a young person from a specific area where there is trouble - not from their home or immediate community. I am suggesting this is a useful tool, but it involves striking a balance between the rights of the respondent and the rights of the local community. The adjudication on the balance to be struck in an individual case is most appropriately determined by the court which should not be influenced in striking that balance by a statutory provision giving the rights of one party priority over those of the other. I made this point and Deputy Catherine Murphy has referred to it. Unfortunately, therefore, I will not be accepting the amendments.
I thank the Minister of State for the clarification. I cannot see why she cannot accept the amendments. Surely the child could be in danger and his or her behaviour could represent the outward manifestation of a very dysfunctional family that requires attention. We have all been impressed thus far by the prompt action of the Child and Family Agency on a number of matters. I cannot understand why it would be inappropriate to include what we propose, or a multi-agency approach, in the legislation. Surely it would be a safeguard for the child being excluded from a particular area. Is this something the Minister of State could reconsider? I am sorry I was not present on Committee Stage because I am not a member of the committee. I cannot see the harm in including what we propose to ensure, first and foremost, that the child receive whatever attention is necessary when there is an excluding order.
The Minister of State talked about communication protocols and the regeneration of areas. I am interested in learning what can be done practically. Perhaps the Minister of State might revert to us with an indication as to how her Department can be helpful in having a uniform approach nationally to changing the current circumstances. There are perfectly good estates which are getting a very bad name because of a very small number of people. The vast majority of residents are happy to live their lives without engaging in anti-social behaviour. We cannot let this go simply by saying one must up one's game at local authority level; more is needed. It is not just a question of communication but also of designing some consequences of bad behaviour.
When we talk about young people and anti-social behaviour, we must examine the inter-agency approach needed. I am thinking of my background in youth services. When I consider youth services in the north inner city, I note the excellent work they are doing with challenging youth through youth clubs, youth projects, Garda diversion projects and the JLO system. This is at the preventive stage and we are looking way down the line. Again, we do not pay enough heed to preventive measures. Some of the issues about which we are talking might not need to be talked about if more emphasis was placed on preventive measures. I hope Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, as Minister of State responsible for housing, can urge the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs to ensure no further cuts to the services that are preventing young people from engaging in anti-social behaviour or that catch youths at a stage when they can be drawn back.
I support the idea of notifying the Child and Family Agency. I do not see any harm in it. We have all experienced cases in which people were excluded from certain areas, including parks. It is important that community projects, social workers and outreach workers be kept informed in this regard. There are existing rules for informing the relevant authorities. What is being proposed will reinforce the system. The authorities will be able to ensure the people in question, particularly the younger ones, will be directed in the right direction, not just excluded from an area. We have witnessed so many times that, regardless of whether we like it, they gravitate back towards the area. There should be an alternative place to go to. All one is doing is pushing people into breaking the order in the first place.
The legislation concerns the point at which a case goes to court. In many ways, what the Deputies are looking for is much earlier intervention. Deputy Catherine Murphy has asked me specifically whether I will return to this issue. It will not be under this legislation because I do not believe it is appropriate to it. However, I am planning to meet the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Charles Flanagan, on the risk of homelessness among young people. I am willing to talk to him about how we can engage on the issues of housing and the under-18s. I will revert to the Deputy in a different forum rather than under this legislation, if that is acceptable.
Amendment put and declared lost.
Amendments Nos. 12 and 13 not moved.
I move amendment No. 14:
In page 35, between lines 7 and 8, to insert the following:
“(3) For the purposes of this section, regulations made under section 3 must—
(a) only include new revisions directly associated with the revised procedure for repossessing of local authority dwellings, and
(b) not provide less favourable terms than the current agreement with the tenant in any other areas.”.”.
The amendment is self-explanatory. It proposes simply that every time a new relevant Bill is published, tenancy agreements have to be updated. The amendment allows only for what is revised in terms of repossessing in this Bill to be included in the reviews of tenancy agreements, and the tenant will then not be left with less favourable terms.
The amendment relates to a new section 29A proposed to be inserted into the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 that empowers the Minister to prescribe amendments to terms of existing local authority tenancy agreements that are consequential to new or existing legislative provisions. It would not be appropriate to limit the application of this new section to procedures for repossessing dwellings only, as proposed by the amendment, as there is a range of terms of existing agreements that will need to be updated over time to reflect existing and future legislative changes. Without the proposed section included in the Bill, existing tenancy agreements needing updating to reflect legislative provisions would have to be terminated individually and the tenants offered a new tenancy agreement containing updated terms and conditions. I suggest this is a very cumbersome way of updating tenancy agreements and could cause unfounded worry for tenants. The section 29A approach is much preferable, involving the Minister prescribing the changes to be made to existing agreements arising from specific enactments, and housing authorities inserting the changes into the tenancy agreements and notifying the tenants accordingly.
The second part of the amendment seeks to confine the operation of the new section 29A to changes that are more favourable for tenants than their existing terms. I cannot accept this restriction on the application of the new section because it would rule out using the procedure for estate management changes to existing agreements that might be less favourable for individual tenants but much more beneficial for the residents of an estate as a whole. An example of this would be changes to tenancy agreements for apartments where new conditions relating to household behaviour could improve the quality of life of everyone living in the apartment complex concerned. I hope that makes sense to the Deputy.
Time will tell if the section 29A approach is the more positive.
Amendment put and declared lost.
I move amendment No. 15:
In page 35, between lines 7 and 8, to insert the following:
“Reallocation of repossessed dwellings
21. The local authority on successful repossession of a dwelling will as far as is practicable ensure that:
(a) any refurbishment works required will be tendered for within 1 month of repossession date,
(b) in the case where only minor refurbishment work is required the dwelling must be reallocated within 3 months of repossession date,
(c) where substantial refurbishment is required the dwelling will be reallocated for habitation not more than 1 month from the completion of refurbishment works.”.
Since 2008 onwards, a huge number of voids have been building up and, until recently, there were roughly 1,800 voids. I know the Minister of State is making moves to deal with that but, from here on, we need to be sure that when we repossess units, they will be tendered for within one month of repossession. The amendment also proposes that in cases where there is only minor refurbishment work, the dwelling must be reallocated within three months of the repossession date. Where substantial refurbishment is required, the dwelling must be reallocated for habitation not more than one month from the completion of refurbishment works.
We need to have targets. The natural progression that happened over the years, when people either died, left tenancies or the tenancies were repossessed, went by the wayside due to lack of funding. This is why we have been left with a build-up of voids. In some local authority areas, voids have been sitting there for three to six months and longer, which is not acceptable given the current crisis. I am trying to put down a marker which the Minister of State and the local authorities can aim at and use as a guide.
The amendment allows me to question the Minister of State in regard to the whole area of refurbishment of vacant units throughout the country. I note the Taoiseach spoke about this yesterday, in particular about his own worries and fears, despite being in office for the last three years, about the length of time it was taking for those houses to be made available by local authorities to suitable tenants, notwithstanding the spiralling housing waiting lists throughout the country.
It is that area I want to address. I know the Minister of State has made funds available specifically to local authorities to address those issues and for a refurbishment programme of vacant units. However, until such time as individual local authorities notify me and others of the inroads, if any, that may be made into those distressing figures, by virtue of the funds that have been made available, I want to know what are the Government's plans other than that. Some local authorities, such as my own, always reallocated the funds garnered from tenant purchase schemes to the refurbishment of existing units. I have made proposals in recent times to the Minister of State where families of those on waiting lists, who might be allocated such a unit, would have the availability of expertise within their own families to refurbish these units. Perhaps the tenancy agreement could reflect this and the rent could obviously reflect the works carried out. Is it not something like that, something outside the box, that needs to be done by the Minister of State and her Department in an effort to address this grave problem that exists in the absence of adequate funding to make them suitable for families?
Is the Minister of State aware at this stage, having made the allocation to the local authorities, of the inroads that will be made? Is she aware of the continued absence of funding? Is she aware how many units specifically within each local authority area will not be dealt with because of the lack of available funding? That being the case, what proposals has she, if any, to address this issue in a more meaningful manner in the future?
While this does not fall within the remit of the Bill before the House, given this is such a serious debate and given the huge crisis in the provision of housing for those on waiting lists throughout the country, she might be able to indicate she is considering such schemes, options or initiatives which might better address the problem, rather than the age-old action of throwing money at it, especially in the absence of adequate funding to address that very issue.
I suggest that is more appropriate to Second Stage. I call Deputy Ó Fearghaíl.
In principle, we would support the amendment put down by Deputy Ellis. If anything, he has been generous in the timescales he is allowing. I want to ask a very specific question. Is it the case that the Department is currently or was previously operating a scheme whereby local authorities could apply for funding to the Department for a house, provided it was vacant for six months? Was it the case that this scheme encouraged local authorities to leave the houses empty for that period of time in order to avail of funding from the Department, as distinct from having to spend their own resources, if they had any, on particular housing programmes?
I hope the Minister of State will accept this amendment because if the Government and the local authorities are not able to deal with this issue, then they do not have a hope of dealing with the housing crisis, given we are talking about houses that are existing, vacant and in public ownership. In the case of every single person on the housing list, the first thing they raise with any councillor or Deputy is the number of boarded up houses they see. It is a huge source of anger for people on waiting lists.
As a public representative over a period of time, I know there are sometimes complex reasons that these houses cannot be acquired and turned over, and we all know there may be legal issues and so on.
However, the reality is that the inability of the State to deal with these houses that have been boarded up over long periods of time is a real reflection of its lack of urgency in respect of the housing crisis. The councils' insistence on gutting the houses is a real problem. It is well reported by many housing tenants that kitchens, presses and units are taken out by local authorities when they do not need to be taken out. This policy must be reviewed, given the current crisis. Sometimes it is done for safety reasons. We are told it is not possible to leave particular lino or tiles behind. It was raised again with me last night at a public meeting in Blanchardstown by people on the housing list. They asked me why this is continuing. They know the council is wasting time carrying out all these renovations when a person would happily move into the house and make whatever adjustments are required themselves.
Cuts in funding are the real reason these houses are lying vacant over long periods of time. It relates to cuts in staff, which means that tradesmen and tradeswomen are not available, and cuts in funding for necessary works. If the Government is serious about doing anything about the housing crisis, one would expect that the first thing it would do is to provide the money and staffing to get these houses turned over very quickly. One would expect an announcement to be made, so I imagine that the Minister of State will agree to this amendment.
I have spoken to the Minister of State about the procurement process, which has been part of the delay. Some of that may have been overcome at this stage because there are now lists of contractors who can be called upon. I heard about it from staff within the local authority in Kildare. They were tearing their hair out over the delay. They wanted to get work done on the 49 vacant houses in Kildare. One could have put tenants in every one of them ten times over and one would still not have dealt with all the people who are in an urgent situation. Could the Minister of State tell us something about that procurement process? Am I correct in saying there has been some improvement?
I do not doubt that anyone would make the same point as I am making, but when houses are vacant they often suffer further damage. Putting in shutters is very expensive. I remember hearing that it cost a couple of hundred euro per month. If one replicates this around the country, it represents a very large cost which must be added to the cost of rent assistance. It makes economic and social sense to turn these houses over quickly. Deputy Coppinger referred to the point of view of homeless people who see shuttered houses when they say they will take anything in any condition - even something smaller than their family would need. It causes offence to people in need of housing. I would be interested in hearing what the Minister of State has to say about the procurement process.
I warmly support the amendment in the name of Deputy Ellis. It is extremely frustrating for communities, particularly people on housing lists, and public representatives to see homes being boarded up month after month. Questions arose in the Dublin City Council administrative area about the efficiency of the maintenance departments in councils and the effectiveness of their estate management, because some boarded-up houses would have been houses that families subjected to terrible antisocial behaviour had had to flee - for example, corner houses in badly designed estates, particularly those designed in the 1970s and 1980s. There are many issues around this but most people would feel that targets for local authorities should be enshrined in a housing Bill. The Minister of State told me yesterday that there are 3,016 vacant properties across the 31 new city and county councils. She told me she had allocated €15 million in April 2014 to refurbish 952, or approximately one-third, of those properties. I note that she allocated €3.3 million to Dublin City Council for 135 units and €1.26 million to Fingal County Council for 95 properties. I note that the new chief executive of Fingal County Council, Paul Reid, told me that the council is hoping to refurbish 120 vacant properties. I also note that 49 refurbishments are planned in County Kildare, at a cost of €700,000, and 12 refurbishments are planned in County Offaly, at a cost of €250,000. However one does the sums, the bottom line is that it is not enough money. The Minister of State said yesterday that she would provide a further €20 million for vacant units, but this still means that up to one-third of the units will still lie vacant for a lengthy period. As many Deputies have said, we have heard the refrain "Let me into that house and we will refurbish it," for years and years. People talk about how they have carpenters, brickies or plasterers in the family. We have heard that plaintive plea for a home down through the years. I strongly support the amendment.
I welcome Deputy Coppinger. On Second Stage, when she was not a Member of the House, we had many contributions relating to people's absolute frustration at seeing houses they could be living in lying empty for years and seeing kitchens being thrown out when they were on the housing waiting list. It is something that everybody in this House feels very strongly about, regardless of our political persuasions.
I allocated that funding, which will bring over 1,700 vacant units back into use. As Deputy Broughan noted, the first tranche was for 952 units. There is a further €20 million. We have specifically allocated the first tranche and we know exactly how many units it is to cover in each local authority estate. They must report back to me when they have done it. It is for individual houses and apartments. It is not just a lump of money that they can do whatever they like with. It is for specific houses and we must see that it is done within a specific timeframe.
The second tranche has not yet been allocated because we want another report from the councils telling us exactly what units they will refurbish with this money so that we can track it and make sure it is properly spent. There was a problem identified by Deputy Ó Fearghaíl relating to the previous scheme, which finished at the end of 2012. In 2013, the money for retrofitting was for occupied houses, but up to then, the houses had to be vacant for six months before they got the funding. Local authorities were leaving houses empty for six months so that they would get the funding. We are trying to be as clever as we can be in ensuring that the money is actually spent on bringing units back into use and then allocating them.
I understand where Deputy Ellis is coming from in terms of the amendments. One of the reasons I cannot accept them relates to the point raised by Deputy Catherine Murphy about tendering. This amendment states that any refurbishment works required will be tendered for within one month of the repossession date. What is happening with regard to procurement is that most local authorities have a framework in place so they do not have to go through the normal tendering process. There are still some local authorities that do not have this framework in place. I can probably find out which ones do not have it, but most of them do have it, so they can move relatively quickly with the companies they have on their books to carry out, for example, small retrofitting jobs. In this way, they do not have to go through the normal tendering process and can move more quickly.
Most of them are using this process under the retrofitting and vacant properties schemes.
The amendment is prescriptive in defining timelines for housing authorities in respect of a number of actions, with some of which it might be impossible for them to comply. The extent of refurbishment works required to a property should be the measure that determines the timeline as to when it might be available for reallocation to a new tenant and while this is reflected somewhat in the Deputy's text, it does not account for the availability or lack thereof of resources to finance the works involved. In some cases, where the works are extensive, funding may be required from my Department. An example is the funding I announced recently.
It is more difficult to be as prescriptive as the Deputy, but I understand from where he is coming and I am determined to speed up the process. We are examining whether we can adopt a mandatory process as part of a carrot and stick approach. We may need a stick, given that the funding we have allocated is the carrot. I have also sought legal advice on the issues raised by local authorities. They state, for example, that they cannot let the house if the previous tenant has installed a particular appliance, cupboard and so on in case somebody is hurt by them. They are worried about the legal implications in this regard; therefore, I am seeking advice to ensure I can be specific about what they can and cannot do in the context of their legal obligations.
It is a little bizarre that the Department which I do not exonerate is expected to come to the assistance of local authorities which have large stocks of social housing and large incomes deriving from the rents paid. It is my experience as someone directly involved in voluntary housing provision that we do not have to turn to the Department or the local authority to seek funds to refurbish our houses when tenancies are being renewed. The fact that the Minister of State is doing what she is doing indicates that local authorities are not prudently and effectively managing their stock in so far as they have to turn to her to seek funding. If they filled the vacancies expeditiously and did not have houses lying idle, leading to a scenario in which they are vandalised, and if there was effective on the ground management, with prudent management of stock maintenance and the funds generated from rents, surely this operation would be self-financing. I am aware of many houses being refurbished and because there was a delay in their reallocation, they were vandalised again.
It is a matter for each local authority in the context of the availability of its own resources from rental income and receipts from the sale of dwellings under the tenant purchase schemes to maintain their stock and ensure houses are made available. They also have had delegated sanction to use their internal capital receipts for housing purposes since 1 January 2007, subject to terms and conditions. They are, therefore, supposed to use their income from tenant purchases and rents to maintain housing stock. Other parties have many more councillors than my party since the local elections.
We know the reason for that.
The Labour Party had a good few for many years.
Perhaps they might raise the issue at local level. Some councils are better at this than others. They do not have many vacancies and turn over houses over quickly. Other councils are not so good in this regard, which is why I brought in all of the directors of housing a few weeks ago. I acknowledge that they do not like many diktats from the Custom House, but the primary responsibility lies with the local authority to maintain its own housing stock.
The Minister of State does not mind the diktats coming from the managers' association.
Would it not be prudent to publish a league table to examine the performance of local authorities and hold them to account if they are languishing in the relegation zone or whatever the case might be?
A parliamentary question was tabled to establish the average time it took to reallocate houses and there are major disparities around the country. I cannot recall who tabled the question.
Will the Minister of State consider such a proposal? She can come back to us with details of the means by which she might be able to do this. She must be cognisant of the ideas being put forward on a scheme to deal with vacant houses in need of refurbishment. While I take Deputy Seán Ó'Fearghaíl's point, the diminishing returns from rents and house purchases because of arrears and so forth are creating a problem that needs to be addressed.
We discussed that issue on an earlier amendment.
In the short term the Minister of State might start from a point where we would have a better means to question the performance of local authorities.
If the money is available to local authorities from the Department, what is the problem in having a timeline for its use? That is the key issue. This sends the wrong message if the Government is not willing to state contracts will go to tender within one month, for example. Timelines must be prescribed, otherwise there will be no change.
We allocated money recently as part of a stimulus package. Money is not always available throughout the year. There is money available because two stimulus packages were announced by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and my Department received €50 million from each package for social housing. Currently, money is available for the refurbishment of specific houses and their reallocation. However, this legislation has to work all the time. For example, there could be a major fire in a house and the local authority would not be able to complete the work within a strict timeframe.
I allowed a little latitude because of the importance of the issue.
The housing budget has been cut by more than €1 billion since 2008. Even in the past few years, there have been cutbacks. While a stimulus package was announced, the budget was reduced by €60 million this year. The Minister of State has announced measures that will ameliorate this to some extent. She is addressing a number of voids across the country and trying to sort them out, but we need to adopt measures for the future to make sure this does not happen again. That requires resources. The amendment would set down rules for the future. I have outlined a number of areas in which they could be applied. I am aware of houses being boarded up for one year, with neighbours going made because of the anti-social behaviour and other problems this generates. That is unacceptable. The problems vary across local authorities. Some are worse than others in this regard.
What I have outlined in my amendment is conservative, as even Fianna Fáil has acknowledged, which must be a compliment. We need to provide resources and prescribe the timeframes I have provided for in the amendment because there is such a crisis that we cannot afford to fail to do so. When a local authority is short of money, these targets are needed in the context of repossessions and so on.
Amendment put and declared lost.
Amendments Nos. 16, 17 and 18 are logical alternatives and may be discussed together. If amendment No. 16 is agreed to, amendments Nos. 17 and 18 cannot be moved.
I move amendment No. 16:
In page 37, between lines 16 and 17, to insert the following:
“(4) A housing authority shall ensure that, unless otherwise directed by resolution of the elected members of the local authority to which the housing authority is subject, 100 per cent of the proceeds garnered from the sale of a house under this Part shall be retained by the local authority for the specific purpose of providing further accommodation.”.
I realise that local authorities are empowered to retain the funds in their areas but, and I asked this question on Committee Stage and I am not convinced I received an answer, do the balances of the local authorities contribute towards the general Government deficit?
This amendment deals with a key issue. If we are to maintain the extent of the housing stock, it is essential that this money is re-used to provide replacement housing, whether that comes in the form of a new house or through refurbishing other houses. The quantity of housing is the issue. I read the executive summary of the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, report that was produced yesterday. It states that the fund for social housing provision on the necessary scale will require the creation of public housing institutions capable of attracting finance without adding to the national debt, and that such housing providers would require an adequate rental income stream. Essentially, it is referring to a mixture of people who are at work and people who are not at work and who would be unable to pay significant rents.
This legislation is being presented in the absence of us knowing what the future holds in terms of the prospects for the more than 90,000 on the housing lists, with another more than 10,000 people likely to be added to the lists with the number of repossessions coming down the tracks. If it is the case that we will not see large-scale social housing being provided, are we seeing here an attempt to gather an income? How will that income be spent? In future, will social housing provision be exclusively the preserve of private entities, with the market the main provider of social housing? If that is to be the case and unless there are caps on the amount of rent that can be sought, there will be a serious problem with people having to source that accommodation themselves and the issue of how that housing is managed. It also has consequences down the line for children.
The number of houses that can be provided from ring-fencing this fund will be a small contribution. The Minister said she will introduce a scheme that will be related to people's income. When does she think that scheme might be introduced and how does she envisage it being introduced?
I will speak to amendment No. 17, which relates to section 23. I have always believed that if we sell local authority housing to tenants, the purchase money should be ring-fenced for housing. We should not deplete our housing stock. There should be a means of ring-fencing the money for that and for the maintenance of existing local authority housing stock. The money should be targeted on those two areas. For too long local authorities have been incrementally getting rid of and depleting their housing stock. That is an awful shame. Housing provision is being pushed to voluntary housing. The lead in delivering housing should be taken by the local authority, but the road we are taking is driving us more towards voluntary housing. In amendment No. 17 I am asking that we ring-fence this money, which is something on which we should all agree, and in certain cases it could be used for maintenance. That is crucial.
I strongly support both amendments. It is just common sense that the moneys accruing to local authorities should be ring-fenced and reinvested in this way.
Chairman, I do not know if I misinterpreted your comment about including amendment No. 18 in this group. Amendment No. 18 seeks the amendment of section 44 of the 2009 Act and deals with the area of voluntary housing. Can you explain why it is included with this group?
I can explain. The reason is written down in front of me.
Whoever wrote it down got it wrong, because they are two radically different areas.
In amendment No. 18 I am saying to the Minister that by not including voluntary housing in the Bill she is missing a golden opportunity to recognise that an injustice is being perpetrated on the tenants of voluntary housing associations. If their houses were built after 2010, they cannot buy their properties. The 2009 Act made provision for an incremental purchase scheme for local authority houses and for identified voluntary housing units. I do not know if any voluntary housing units were built after 2009. There were not many local authority units built. When I asked my local authority this morning how many houses had been sold in County Kildare under the incremental purchase scheme I was told "none".
We welcome the concept of a purchase scheme in principle. I was a great advocate of the old traditional tenant purchase scheme which had an element of discount and which people understood and used to great effect throughout the country. People got a local authority house, their circumstances improved, they bought the house, built onto it, raised their family and everybody was happy.
However, I believe approximately 20,000 units across the country were delivered by voluntary housing associations under the capital loan and subsidy scheme, CLSS. I am not referring to the capital assistance scheme, CAS, units and the specialised units that were built for people with disabilities, elderly people and so forth. There is a need to retain the ownership of those units with the voluntary bodies that built them. However, where the other voluntary housing associations are concerned, the people who were housed in those units had no other choice. In many instances they were recommended to the voluntary housing association by the local authority. They saw themselves as getting a house but they did not know at the time they were getting it that they were condemning themselves to an indefinite period of renting.
In Kildare we developed the voluntary sector as a self-help initiative. In some places in County Kildare there are locally based voluntary housing associations where the people came together to form the association. The association then went on to build houses on an agency basis for the county council. In the same estate there is a level of integration, where there are voluntary units and the units built for the county council on an agency basis. People can buy the county council houses but the people in the voluntary units who came from the same housing list and benefited from the same source of funding, which was 100% grant aid from the Department, cannot buy their houses.
One of the Minister's predecessors, former Deputy Michael Finneran, introduced the incremental purchase scheme.
Mrs. Thatcher, of whom I am no great admirer, delivered social housing in Britain by way of the voluntary housing associations, which is why Deputy Catherine Murphy is correct to say we must be careful to avoid a situation where the local authorities cease to be the housing agencies and we offload the entire responsibility onto voluntary housing associations. It may in some respects be a misnomer to describe them as voluntary given that they are large commercial enterprises in respect of which there has been a degree of empire building. These very large bodies which are themselves opposed to a tenant purchase scheme should not be allowed to deprive people of an opportunity to purchase their properties.
Amendment No. 18 asks that common sense prevail. It seeks to put in place a tenant purchase scheme to allow people to buy homes out in the same way as people who avail of local authority housing can do and to ring-fence the funding so that it all goes back in to provide further social housing locally or, in exceptional cases, to refurbish houses, should that be necessary.
There is a correlation between amendment No. 18 and amendments Nos. 16 and 17 in that the former refers to "a local authority and an approved body" in proposing to amend section 44 of the 2009 Act. I presume it should have said "and/or an approved body", but it means the same thing. That is how they happen to be linked together.
If I understood him correctly, the Acting Chairman said that if amendment No. 16 were to fall, we would not be able to vote on amendments Nos. 17 and 18.
That is right. That is what is says here.
They are completely different. In so far as it applies to voluntary housing, amendment No. 18 is completely different. There is no correlation.
If it is agreed. If amendment No. 16 is made, there will be no necessity.
There is no correlation with amendments Nos. 17 and 18.
No, there is not.
I am sorry about that, but I do not propose to get involved in an argument. I have ruled on it and we will move on. That is enough of that.
To date, the Minister of State has not accepted an amendment from anybody.
We will wait for the Minister of State to reply, which she has not yet done. I call Deputy Broughan.
This is an important amendment and I warmly support Deputy Catherine Murphy in respect of it. It relates to the fact that the core problem in providing the social housing desperately needed by 100,000 families is finance. It is all about finance. If one looks at the medium-term review, which the outgoing Secretary General at the Department of Finance keeps telling us to read, one can see that it is planned that there will be very little money. It looks as though the Government that is elected in 2016 will have a much easier time in terms of managing fiscal targets to 2020, according to this medium-term review. Even at that, very little money is available for social housing.
I note that the issue was addressed today in the report by the National Economic and Social Council entitled "Social Housing at the Crossroads: Possibilities for Investment, Provision and Cost Rental". That body is right to draw attention to the fact that because social housing is included in the general Government deficit, it is virtually impossible for people who accepted the blanket bank guarantee and the remit of the troika to raise funds for social housing. If one looks at our EU partner countries such as Sweden and France, one will see that in those countries local authorities and public corporations can access funding to provide social housing outside the general governmental deficit and funding structures. One of the issues mentioned in the NESC report is the necessity for a new public corporation to dramatically transform NAMA into an organisation which seriously begins to address the housing crisis. Certainly, it has access to the kind of funding that is necessary.
I remember, as will the Acting Chairman, that in the late 1980s, the then Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats Government abandoned the provision of large-scale social housing. It simply walked away from it. I remember, as the leader of the local authority, leading a walk-out of councillors from an address being given by the then Minister responsible for the environment portfolio, Mr. Michael Smith. He was totally abandoning the process whereby over a number of decades, local authorities - and his own party in the 1930s - were able to provide in one of the poorest countries in Europe a significant tranche of social housing across cities, towns and rural areas. That was abandoned by Fianna Fáil's Haughey-MacSharry Government in the late 1980s as well as by subsequent Governments. The Acting Chairman knows well that we laboured here for 14 long, bitter years even though the country was building 100,000 units per year in a mad, frantic alliance of Government, developers and banks which brought us to an incredible tragedy in 2008. Social housing provision was minuscule and families who were waiting were dealt with in an unregulated and contemptuous manner. The lists built up and up, and we have seen the results in the last six years.
This is a very significant amendment which addresses the core of the problem. We must put significant finance into this. The Minister of State has spoken about providing 4,000 units, rising to 6,000, but we need much more. We need to declare a housing emergency and to place a cap on rents in the private sector. We need strong action by a vigorous Government. Unfortunately, the Government, which seems to be outgoing in terms of its personnel, did not deliver, as was the case with its predecessor, which left us with the terrible tragedy we are experiencing. The amendment is well timed.
The issue we have just been discussing would not in any way be solved by the amendment, which provides only that the money that comes in from the sale of a house under Part 3 shall be retained by the local authority for the specific purpose of providing further accommodation. It is a limited amount of money and not the kind of funding needed to address the entire social housing need. Nevertheless, a general discussion has arisen in this context.
Deputies Catherine Murphy and Tommy Broughan raised the issue of the NESC report. It is not my report but that body's, and it was submitted for consideration. We need to consider all of the various possibilities and options, and NESC is a recognised body which has representations across a variety of sectors. The fact that it has published a report does not mean I will implement all of it, however. It includes ideas on social renting, etc., that are new to Ireland, and we must at least look at them. However, I would much prefer to be building local authority houses through the local authority and not-for-profit sectors. I am not particularly enthusiastic about private entities becoming involved at all. This is for discussion, and I am delighted that so many people here have actually read it. There are other documents coming down the line, including from the Housing Agency, which is doing work on the lower end of the rental market. Other documents will be feeding into the public debate, which is a necessary one.
I will not go back into attacking Fianna Fáil about the bank guarantee, but Deputy Broughan made the point that the general Government deficit includes provision of direct funding for housing. Unfortunately, as Minister of State with responsibility for housing, I must live with that. We have targets to reach. I do not want to waste too much time on this, but I note that I have simply not had the funding to deliver a large-scale social housing programme.
The Minister of State can break out of that.
How would I do that? I would love to know how. Perhaps Deputy Broughan can tell me.
She should go and sit beside Tommy.
She should go back to her roots.
The Minister of State without interruption. No breakouts.
If we do not reach the targets, there will be all sorts of consequences.
Others raised the general issue so I wanted to refer to it. With regard to the specific amendments, there are some different points in the third of the three amendments. With regard to the first two, I said on Committee Stage that they duplicate an existing enactment in the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009. Section 13 of the Act provides that capital moneys accruing to the housing authority from a number of sources, including the sale of a dwelling under the old tenant purchase schemes provided by the 1966 Act or the two incremental purchase schemes provided for in the 2009 Act, will be ring-fenced in a separate account and, subject to the Minister's prior approval, used for the provision of housing or for the refurbishment or maintenance of existing houses or related purposes. Such provisions refer to the local authorities' internal capital receipts. Furthermore, section 32(a) amends section 13 of the 2009 Act to provide that moneys accruing from the sale of the dwelling under Part 3 of the Bill will be subject to the provisions of section 13. It is there already.
Since 2007, local authorities have had delegated sanction to use their internal capital receipts for housing purposes, subject to certain terms and conditions. Under these procedures, authorities are required to submit an annual programme of works to be funded by the internal capital receipts, primarily consisting of planned maintenance and improvement of their existing housing stock, for approval by my Department. It has also been agreed that local authorities can use their internal receipts to augment the funding used to finance the authorities' funding from its own resources of the suite of grants for older persons and people with disabilities.
Regarding amendment No. 18 and approved housing bodies, I take the points being made but, whether we like it or not, approved housing bodies are the approved de facto owners of the properties and they are required to make them available for social renting for the duration of the mortgage or, as the case may be, the availability agreement. My Department cannot unilaterally make legal provision for their sale to tenants. Any such decision must involve the approved housing body and have regard to the mortgage on the property. I cannot do it legally because the State does not own the property; it is owned by the approved housing body. Whether that can be examined in the future, in terms of money being allocated, is another point, but under the current circumstances I cannot do it.
Deputy Catherine Murphy asked me about the new tenant purchase scheme and what is likely to be in it. In order to qualify for purchase under the scheme, a tenant must be in receipt of social housing support for a minimum prescribed period of not less than one year and have a prescribed minimum gross annual income. The purchase price of the house will be based on its market value and its existing condition and state of repair, although it will be subject to a minimum price that takes account of the cost to the housing authority of replacing the house being sold. The detail will be by way of regulation and I have not yet taken a final decision on it. The likely model will be the existing incremental purchase schemes, which provide for discounts of 60%, 50% or 40% of the purchase price depending on tenant income. That is the current state of play.
With regard to the response of the Minister of State to amendment No. 18, we must have regard to the fact that the 2009 Act makes provision for voluntary housing association units built after its enactment to be sold. Therefore, it is possible. I take the point made by the Minister of State that we cannot force the voluntary housing associations that own the housing units to sell the units to their tenants. However, at present, if such voluntary housing associations want to sell units to the tenants, they cannot do so because the legislation prohibits them from doing so. All I am asking of the Minister of State is to include a provision in the Bill, as drafted in these amendments, to allow the sale of houses where the voluntary housing association and the local authority are of the opinion that it is beneficial to the tenants and the overall welfare of the local community that the sale take place. The differentiation we make is not that the Minister of State forces voluntary housing associations to sell units but that the Minister of State enacts legislation to allow voluntary associations, where there is agreement with the local authority, to sell units. A predecessor of the Minister of State, Deputy Emmet Stagg, who may have been the first Minister of State with responsibility for housing, promised faithfully to do something about this. The reality is that powerful voluntary housing lobbies have been used to prevent the introduction of such a scheme. Natural justice and the interest of the communities involved should outweigh the desire on the part of any voluntary body to build an empire. Having come off the same lists and having availed of the same taxpayers' money, people should have the same opportunity to purchase.
I agree with the amendments. The following point arises from a suggestion made to me by someone on the list in my area. In expanding tenant purchase, we could provide for people on the list to have the possibility of getting a loan from the local authority to build a house. It is something to examine. As well as being able to purchase a local authority house, we should consider the category of people on the list who are working and qualify for the list and who, if they were given cheap finance and land by the local authority, could come off the list and build their houses. This would relieve some of the pressure on housing lists, free up spaces on the list and provide housing for people who need housing but cannot afford it on the open market. I ask the Minister of State to think about that.
I take the point made by Deputy Sean Ó Fearghaíl about the difference between amendments Nos. 16, 17 and 18 and the point about people being offered accommodation through the housing associations. This results in a dramatic change in respect of their opportunity to purchase in the future. I have heard that point several times. I refer to the point made by the Minister of State in respect of social renting. A third option is needed. I do not dispute some of the points made by the NESC report, which are valid and represent a good contribution. The local authority will continue and should continue to have a function and it should be a function where there is a large-scale option.
I do not agree with the notion that all Irish people want to own their homes. Most people want to have security of tenure and, if they are renting, they want to rent a home, particularly if there are children involved, where there is stability and where they can set down roots. Most people, particularly when children are involved, do not want to rent someone else's property when the latter has almost all of the control in respect of security of tenure. We must have a different debate about a third option.
It is probably good there will be a mixture of people renting within that kind of environment. However, where people have been allocated a house within a housing or voluntary association, the expectation had been there that if they wanted to, they could purchase that house at some point in the future. They did not have to take up that option, but it was available. If it is necessary to go back and talk to the larger housing associations to provide for this, which it appears it is, that should be done.
Deputy Ó Fearghaíl spoke on amendment No. 18, but I wish to comment on the Minister's response on amendments Nos. 16 and 17, which we support. The Minister of State said that under legislation, the Minister has authority to give consent to the local authority to retain the funds or proceeds from tenant purchase schemes for dispersal within the housing section of that local authority. I respect this, but notwithstanding the provision, does the Minister not believe that the authority of the Minister may be somewhat undermined by virtue of the powers that exist for the Economic Management Council, EMC, at this time? That being the case, the direction of that body might be that all Ministers return funds from any such schemes for dispersal by central Government.
It is against this background we disagree with the Minister of State's response on the proposed amendment. Is she not of the same opinion as us, that the real power within Cabinet is that of the Economic Management Council, as we saw to our cost in regard to the process of the setting up of Irish Water? We saw the underhand manner in which the EMC withheld information from the rest of Cabinet in regard to the way in which funds were drawn down from the National Pensions Reserve Fund and saw the lack of accountability to this House regarding funds derived from that body and the manner in which it was done. This left the public at large without recourse to adequate responses in regard to that whole process. It is against this background that I urge caution on the part of the Minister of State in this instance to feel she can hide behind the existing legislation which states it is at the discretion of the Minister to allow those funds be retained. I fear that power may be usurped by the authority of the EMC.
I see no reason for amendments Nos. 16 and 17 not to be accepted. I do not accept what the Minister of State has said, that this is already provided for in legislation. We all know that any income that comes in to a local authority is taken into account when it comes to local government funding. Often this money is put on the central books and we end up with less money for local government funding.
There is an issue also in regard to Dublin City Council flats. No progress has been made in terms of selling these flats. The last thing I want to see is social housing coming off the lists, but any money received in regard to such housing sales must be ringfenced. There is nothing wrong with seeking ringfencing of this money and if there is no demand for further social housing, the money could be used for the maintenance of existing local housing stock. This must be stated specifically in the Bill. The previous Act mentions money may be used for "related purposes or otherwise", which leaves a way for the money to be used elsewhere. This is unacceptable, because we must replace stock. The situation is so urgent we must do that.
In regard to my earlier intervention, based on my interpretation of the 2009 Act, a number of schemes fund the voluntary housing schemes - capital allowance scheme, capital assistance scheme and others. One of those schemes is funded entirely by the State, with no contribution from the voluntary agency. It would be an omission on my part if I did not bring this to the attention of the House.
A wide range of issues has been raised on this section. Deputy Boyd Barrett mentioned loans to build. Rural Deputies have suggested this, particularly where people have land on which they wish to build.
In regard to the issue raised by Deputy Ellis, on Committee Stage I undertook to come back on the issue of the sale of maisonettes. Part IV of the 2009 Act included provision for a scheme for the tenant purchase of apartments in a designated local authority complex, provided the sale comprised at least five apartments. The reason for the minimum complex size is that the apartment sale scheme involves the establishment of a management company, which the Law Reform Commission indicated in 2008 is not the appropriate owner and management mechanism for smaller residential complexes with limited shared areas and services. The effect of this is that while larger maisonette type developments may be eligible for designation under the apartment sale scheme, small developments will not qualify. I realise this is not the issue the Deputy just raised, but it was raised on Committee Stage by Deputy Boyd Barrett.
Is the Minister saying we cannot allow the sale of these units?
The complex must have at least five units. I do not know whether we can look to see if there is a way around this. It has to do with common areas and the need for estate management, in compliance with the judgment of the Law Reform Commission. Perhaps we can come back to that later.
I am satisfied that the issues raised in amendments Nos. 16 and 17 are dealt with already in legislation. In regard to the approved housing bodies, I am advised they legally retain the right not to sell, because they are the owners of the properties, irrespective of how they were funded. I accept the point that in some cases these bodies were 100% funded. These bodies are the owners of the properties and that is the reason we will not accept the amendment.
We do not dispute they are the owners of the property. What we are saying is that the legislation, as it is structured, prevents them from selling, even if they want to sell, but let the Minister of State correct me if I am wrong. Will she change the legislation so that if they are willing to sell and if the local authority in the area is of the view they should sell, this will be possible? We want her to enable this to happen, not to continue to prohibit the sale of such housing. We want her to reflect the provisions that were made in the incremental purchase scheme that was introduced in the 2009 Act.
I made reference earlier to Margaret Thatcher, God between us and all harm. When she introduced this system of voluntary housing development, initially there was a ban on the sale of these houses, but when John Major became Prime Minister of Britain, the situation changed and the people who occupied the houses were given the opportunity to purchase them. We ask the Minister of State to be as inspired as John Major was and to take steps to do something about this now.
Am I to take it from the Minister of State's response that she does not feel the authority of the Minister for the Environment and Local Government is diminished in any way by virtue of the three Members of the Cabinet and the Taoiseach, who form the EMC, having authority over and above -----
I forgot to respond on that, but thought it was a provocative question.
It was not at all provocative. The greatest example of how information was withheld from the rest of the Cabinet came at a time when the EMC saw fit to take funds from the National Pensions Reserve Fund in the matter of the setting up of Irish Water.
That meant that no Member of this House could ask questions pertaining to how those funds had been spent because of the legislation governing the taking of funds from the NPRF. Had they been taken from elsewhere, we would have been able to ask questions and received answers much earlier than was ultimately the case. I have given the Minister of State an example of how the powers of the Economic Management Council usurped those of the remainder of the Cabinet at the time. Does she not have similar fears about the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government's veto over the rest of the Cabinet on funds derived from-----
I have absolutely no reason to believe the Economic Management Council has, at any time, stated anything about the capital receipts of local authorities.
Sorry-----
I have no reason to believe the Economic Management Council has, at any time, deliberated on, stated anything about or made any decision on the capital receipts of local authorities. I have no reason to believe the Deputy's fears are in any way grounded in reality.
That is a different issue.
What about the other point made by my colleague?
I have already responded to it.
The Minister of State has not responded to it.
Let me clarify something before we proceed. If amendment No. 16 falls, according to the Acting Chairman, amendments Nos. 17 and 18 also fall. This is crucial.
No. If amendment No. 16 is accepted, the other amendments fall.
That is what I mean.
I voice my absolute opposition should that happen.
That makes no sense. Connecting amendments Nos. 16 and 17 makes sense, but amendments Nos. 16 and 18-----
That is what is stated in the notes in front of me and I have no power or authority from any source to change it. That is the rule.
The amendments are poles apart.
As I said, there is a possible question mark over amendment No. 18 in the sense that it proposes to amend the Act of 2009 and makes reference to both "a local authority and an approved body". As the local authority and the approved body must agree, there is a correlation, which brings it within the scope of the decision to take the three amendments together.
Is it the case that the Acting Chairman is not going to put amendments Nos. 16 to 18, inclusive, to the House individually?
I must put the question. If the amendment is accepted, the others go by the wayside.
That makes absolutely no sense.
On a point of order, I do not understand the logic. Amendments Nos. 16 and 17 are specifically about local authorities. They do not refer to voluntary housing bodies.
The Deputy's point has been made.
The point has been made but not accepted.
A most interesting debate-----
All of the amendments will be defeated.
I find the debate most interesting, but we must move on. Deputy Catherine Murphy has tabled amendment No. 16-----
In other words, the Chairman disagrees with it, but he will do it anyway.
We are in the business of enacting legislation.
As everyone has said and the Minister of State has conceded, there are two amendments before us that relate to local authorities and a third amendment that relates to voluntary housing associations which is completely different.
No; it is related to both.
It is not.
It is not related and the Acting Chairman said as much earlier. He said he did not agree with the grouping, but he is going to proceed with it anyway.
There is a word missing; that is all.
Amendment put:
The Dáil divided: Tá, 43; Níl, 80.
Tá
- Adams, Gerry.
- Boyd Barrett, Richard.
- Broughan, Thomas P.
- Calleary, Dara.
- Collins, Joan.
- Colreavy, Michael.
- Coppinger, Ruth.
- Cowen, Barry.
- Crowe, Seán.
- Doherty, Pearse.
- Dooley, Timmy.
- Ellis, Dessie.
- Ferris, Martin.
- Fleming, Sean.
- Grealish, Noel.
- Halligan, John.
- Healy, Seamus.
- Healy-Rae, Michael.
- Higgins, Joe.
- Kelleher, Billy.
- Kirk, Seamus.
- McConalogue, Charlie.
- McGrath, Finian.
- McGrath, Mattie.
- McGrath, Michael.
- McGuinness, John.
- McLellan, Sandra.
- Martin, Micheál.
- Murphy, Catherine.
- Naughten, Denis.
- Ó Caoláin, Caoimhghín.
- Ó Cuív, Éamon.
- Ó Fearghaíl, Seán.
- Ó Snodaigh, Aengus.
- O'Sullivan, Maureen.
- Pringle, Thomas.
- Ross, Shane.
- Shortall, Róisín.
- Smith, Brendan.
- Stanley, Brian.
- Tóibín, Peadar.
- Troy, Robert.
- Wallace, Mick.
Níl
- Bannon, James.
- Barry, Tom.
- Breen, Pat.
- Burton, Joan.
- Butler, Ray.
- Buttimer, Jerry.
- Byrne, Catherine.
- Byrne, Eric.
- Cannon, Ciarán.
- Carey, Joe.
- Coffey, Paudie.
- Collins, Áine.
- Conaghan, Michael.
- Conlan, Seán.
- Connaughton, Paul J.
- Coonan, Noel.
- Coveney, Simon.
- Daly, Jim.
- Deasy, John.
- Deenihan, Jimmy.
- Deering, Pat.
- Doherty, Regina.
- Dowds, Robert.
- Doyle, Andrew.
- Durkan, Bernard J.
- English, Damien.
- Feighan, Frank.
- Ferris, Anne.
- Flanagan, Charles.
- Flanagan, Terence.
- Griffin, Brendan.
- Hannigan, Dominic.
- Harrington, Noel.
- Heydon, Martin.
- Howlin, Brendan.
- Humphreys, Heather.
- Humphreys, Kevin.
- Keating, Derek.
- Kehoe, Paul.
- Kenny, Seán.
- Kyne, Seán.
- Lawlor, Anthony.
- Lynch, Kathleen.
- Lyons, John.
- McEntee, Helen.
- McFadden, Gabrielle.
- McGinley, Dinny.
- McHugh, Joe.
- McLoughlin, Tony.
- McNamara, Michael.
- Maloney, Eamonn.
- Mitchell O'Connor, Mary.
- Mulherin, Michelle.
- Murphy, Dara.
- Murphy, Eoghan.
- Nash, Gerald.
- Neville, Dan.
- Nolan, Derek.
- Noonan, Michael.
- Ó Ríordáin, Aodhán.
- O'Donnell, Kieran.
- O'Donovan, Patrick.
- O'Dowd, Fergus.
- O'Mahony, John.
- O'Reilly, Joe.
- O'Sullivan, Jan.
- Penrose, Willie.
- Phelan, Ann.
- Rabbitte, Pat.
- Reilly, James.
- Ring, Michael.
- Ryan, Brendan.
- Spring, Arthur.
- Stagg, Emmet.
- Tuffy, Joanna.
- Twomey, Liam.
- Varadkar, Leo.
- Wall, Jack.
- Walsh, Brian.
- White, Alex.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Catherine Murphy and Dessie Ellis; Níl, Deputies Emmet Stagg and Paul Kehoe.
Amendment declared lost.
Amendment No. 17 is in the name of Deputy Dessie Ellis. It has already been discussed with amendment No. 16. Is it being pressed or does the Deputy wish to withdraw it?
The Acting Chairman, Deputy Bernard J. Durkan, stated that if amendment No. 16 was defeated, the other two amendments in the group would fall.
They could not be moved.
The Acting Chairman contradicted his ruling in that regard.
Yes.
He stated they could be moved. He should retake the Chair and explain the position.
Bring back Deputy Bernard J. Durkan.
(Interruptions).
I have no difficulty in pressing amendment No. 17. I am only telling the Leas-Cheann Comhairle what the Acting Chairman said. I will press the amendment.
To be clear, the amendment can be moved, but it cannot be discussed.
I move amendment No. 17:
In page 37, between lines 16 and 17, to insert the following:
"Replenishing and refurbishment of housing stock
23. All proceeds from the sale of local authority housing stock must be ring fenced by the Local Authority concerned for use in the replacement of said units or, in the case where demand is not present, for the maintenance of existing local authority housing stock.".
Amendment put:
The Dáil divided: Tá, 44; Níl, 80.
Tá
- Adams, Gerry.
- Boyd Barrett, Richard.
- Broughan, Thomas P.
- Calleary, Dara.
- Collins, Joan.
- Collins, Niall.
- Colreavy, Michael.
- Coppinger, Ruth.
- Cowen, Barry.
- Crowe, Seán.
- Doherty, Pearse.
- Dooley, Timmy.
- Ellis, Dessie.
- Ferris, Martin.
- Fleming, Sean.
- Grealish, Noel.
- Halligan, John.
- Healy, Seamus.
- Healy-Rae, Michael.
- Higgins, Joe.
- Kelleher, Billy.
- Kirk, Seamus.
- McConalogue, Charlie.
- McGrath, Finian.
- McGrath, Mattie.
- McGrath, Michael.
- McGuinness, John.
- McLellan, Sandra.
- Martin, Micheál.
- Murphy, Catherine.
- Naughten, Denis.
- Ó Caoláin, Caoimhghín.
- Ó Cuív, Éamon.
- Ó Fearghaíl, Seán.
- Ó Snodaigh, Aengus.
- O'Sullivan, Maureen.
- Pringle, Thomas.
- Ross, Shane.
- Shortall, Róisín.
- Smith, Brendan.
- Stanley, Brian.
- Tóibín, Peadar.
- Troy, Robert.
- Wallace, Mick.
Níl
- Bannon, James.
- Barry, Tom.
- Breen, Pat.
- Burton, Joan.
- Butler, Ray.
- Buttimer, Jerry.
- Byrne, Catherine.
- Byrne, Eric.
- Cannon, Ciarán.
- Carey, Joe.
- Coffey, Paudie.
- Collins, Áine.
- Conaghan, Michael.
- Conlan, Seán.
- Connaughton, Paul J.
- Coonan, Noel.
- Coveney, Simon.
- Daly, Jim.
- Deasy, John.
- Deenihan, Jimmy.
- Deering, Pat.
- Doherty, Regina.
- Dowds, Robert.
- Doyle, Andrew.
- Durkan, Bernard J.
- English, Damien.
- Feighan, Frank.
- Ferris, Anne.
- Flanagan, Terence.
- Griffin, Brendan.
- Hannigan, Dominic.
- Harrington, Noel.
- Heydon, Martin.
- Howlin, Brendan.
- Humphreys, Heather.
- Humphreys, Kevin.
- Keating, Derek.
- Kehoe, Paul.
- Kenny, Seán.
- Kyne, Seán.
- Lawlor, Anthony.
- Lynch, Kathleen.
- Lyons, John.
- McEntee, Helen.
- McFadden, Gabrielle.
- McGinley, Dinny.
- McHugh, Joe.
- McLoughlin, Tony.
- McNamara, Michael.
- Maloney, Eamonn.
- Mitchell O'Connor, Mary.
- Mulherin, Michelle.
- Murphy, Dara.
- Murphy, Eoghan.
- Nash, Gerald.
- Neville, Dan.
- Nolan, Derek.
- Noonan, Michael.
- Ó Ríordáin, Aodhán.
- O'Donnell, Kieran.
- O'Donovan, Patrick.
- O'Dowd, Fergus.
- O'Mahony, John.
- O'Reilly, Joe.
- O'Sullivan, Jan.
- Penrose, Willie.
- Phelan, Ann.
- Quinn, Ruairí.
- Rabbitte, Pat.
- Reilly, James.
- Ring, Michael.
- Ryan, Brendan.
- Spring, Arthur.
- Stagg, Emmet.
- Tuffy, Joanna.
- Twomey, Liam.
- Varadkar, Leo.
- Wall, Jack.
- Walsh, Brian.
- White, Alex.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Catherine Murphy and Dessie Ellis; Níl, Deputies Emmet Stagg and Paul Kehoe.
Amendment declared lost.
Amendment No. 18 has already been discussed with amendment No. 16.
I move amendment No. 18:
In page 48, between lines 27 and 28, to insert the following:
“Amendment of section 44 of the Act of 2009
35. Section 44 of the Act of 2009 is amended by the insertion of the following subsections after subsection (1):
“(1A) Subsection (1)(a) does not apply in circumstances where a local authority and an approved body agrees that to dispose of a dwelling to a tenant that was constructed prior to the enactment of this Act would be in the best interests of—
(a) the tenant, and/or
(b) the local community in which the particular dwelling is situated.
(1B) The proceeds of sale of any disposal under subsection (1A) shall be ring-fenced for the purposes of—
(a) provision of additional housing by approved bodies in the local authority area in which the particular dwelling is situated, and
(b) to upgrade existing housing stock in the local authority area in which the particular dwelling is situated.”.”.
Is the amendment being pressed?
Yes.
Amendment put:
The Dáil divided: Tá, 43; Níl, 79.
Tá
- Adams, Gerry.
- Boyd Barrett, Richard.
- Broughan, Thomas P.
- Calleary, Dara.
- Collins, Joan.
- Colreavy, Michael.
- Coppinger, Ruth.
- Cowen, Barry.
- Crowe, Seán.
- Doherty, Pearse.
- Dooley, Timmy.
- Ellis, Dessie.
- Ferris, Martin.
- Fleming, Sean.
- Grealish, Noel.
- Halligan, John.
- Healy, Seamus.
- Healy-Rae, Michael.
- Higgins, Joe.
- Kelleher, Billy.
- Kirk, Seamus.
- McConalogue, Charlie.
- McGrath, Finian.
- McGrath, Mattie.
- McGrath, Michael.
- McGuinness, John.
- McLellan, Sandra.
- Martin, Micheál.
- Murphy, Catherine.
- Naughten, Denis.
- Ó Caoláin, Caoimhghín.
- Ó Cuív, Éamon.
- Ó Fearghaíl, Seán.
- Ó Snodaigh, Aengus.
- O'Sullivan, Maureen.
- Pringle, Thomas.
- Ross, Shane.
- Shortall, Róisín.
- Smith, Brendan.
- Stanley, Brian.
- Tóibín, Peadar.
- Troy, Robert.
- Wallace, Mick.
Níl
- Bannon, James.
- Barry, Tom.
- Breen, Pat.
- Burton, Joan.
- Butler, Ray.
- Buttimer, Jerry.
- Byrne, Catherine.
- Byrne, Eric.
- Cannon, Ciarán.
- Carey, Joe.
- Coffey, Paudie.
- Collins, Áine.
- Conaghan, Michael.
- Conlan, Seán.
- Connaughton, Paul J.
- Coonan, Noel.
- Coveney, Simon.
- Daly, Jim.
- Deasy, John.
- Deenihan, Jimmy.
- Deering, Pat.
- Doherty, Regina.
- Dowds, Robert.
- Doyle, Andrew.
- Durkan, Bernard J.
- English, Damien.
- Feighan, Frank.
- Ferris, Anne.
- Fitzgerald, Frances.
- Flanagan, Charles
- Flanagan, Terence.
- Griffin, Brendan.
- Hannigan, Dominic.
- Harrington, Noel.
- Heydon, Martin.
- Howlin, Brendan.
- Humphreys, Heather.
- Humphreys, Kevin.
- Keating, Derek.
- Kenny, Seán.
- Kyne, Seán.
- Lawlor, Anthony.
- Lynch, Kathleen.
- Lyons, John.
- McEntee, Helen.
- McFadden, Gabrielle.
- McGinley, Dinny.
- McHugh, Joe.
- McLoughlin, Tony.
- McNamara, Michael.
- Maloney, Eamonn.
- Mitchell O'Connor, Mary.
- Mulherin, Michelle.
- Murphy, Dara.
- Murphy, Eoghan.
- Nash, Gerald.
- Neville, Dan.
- Nolan, Derek.
- Noonan, Michael.
- Ó Ríordáin, Aodhán.
- O'Donnell, Kieran.
- O'Dowd, Fergus.
- O'Mahony, John.
- O'Reilly, Joe.
- O'Sullivan, Jan.
- Penrose, Willie.
- Phelan, Ann.
- Quinn, Ruairí.
- Rabbitte, Pat.
- Ring, Michael.
- Ryan, Brendan.
- Spring, Arthur.
- Stagg, Emmet.
- Tuffy, Joanna.
- Twomey, Liam.
- Varadkar, Leo.
- Wall, Jack.
- Walsh, Brian.
- White, Alex.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Barry Cowen and Seán Ó Fearghaíl; Níl, Deputies Emmet Stagg and Paul Kehoe.
Amendment declared lost.
(Interruptions).
If Members must have conversations, will they please have them outside the Chamber?
I move amendment No. 19:
In page 49, line 19, after "shall" to insert "not".
I defer to my colleague.
I thank the Deputy. While we support many aspects of the Bill and love the Minister of State for introducing them, I am appalled to find a provision that effectively excludes people who are in receipt of the housing assistance payment, HAP, from local authority housing waiting lists. The HAP is a positive development and the Minister of State is to be commended for integrating responsibility for the totality of housing provision in local authorities. It makes sense to give them responsibility for dealing with the old rent subsidy and the change in title to "HAP" is understandable, but the Minister of State will need to engage forcefully with county and city managers to ensure they invest the necessary resources in housing departments to operate this system. In the past two decades, in particular, housing provision at local authority level was not given the priority it deserved or warranted. When substantial funding was available for construction programmes, sufficient personnel were not allocated to housing departments to allow them to deliver on these programmes. The HAP is a good idea and the Minister of State is moving in the right direction, but she needs to engage with county and city managers to ensure they provide the necessary personnel to allow the system to work effectively.
It is incomprehensible that, under this section of the Bill, receipt of the HAP means someone has had his or her housing needs met. A couple of times my local authority has received a message from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government to the effect that, when someone receives a rental accommodation scheme, RAS, payment, enters temporary RAS accommodation or avails of a long-term leasing arrangement through a voluntary housing association, his or her housing need should be deemed to have been met and, consequently, he or she should be removed from its waiting list. The Department has also told my local authority that, after responsibility for the HAP has transferred to it and the scheme has become operational, those in receipt of it should be deemed to have had their housing needs met.
There are 90,000 plus people on waiting lists, but the number could be as high as 100,000. Of these, 77,000 are in receipt of rent allowance. As the HAP system is developed and rolled out across the country, they will be moved to it from the rent subsidy scheme.
I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but they will then be deemed to have had their housing need met. That is appalling beyond belief. The Minister is setting about "disappearing" 70,000 people into the ether. As Minister of State with responsibility for housing, she will get great plaudits for having reduced the housing list - she will virtually wipe it out - but people's need will continue. I am very concerned that people will be condemned to an indefinite period of living in temporary accommodation where the fulfilment of their needs is at the whim of private landlords who can decide to increase the rent, move them out if they will not pay the increased rent, sell the property or whatever. That was never the tradition in this country. Even in the worst of times we allocated money for the construction of local authority housing. We introduced purchase schemes which allowed people to build. We introduced the rent subsidy scheme, which is costing approximately €500 million, effectively as an interim measure between homelessness and local authority housing. The Taoiseach referred to the NESC report in the House during the week. He said we would no longer have the opportunity or be in a position to provide the sort of funding for social housing that we have provided in the past and that we need to have a conversation about what we are going to do. This Fine Gael-led Government is more right wing than we have seen in many years, but the last thing the Irish people would have expected is that the Labour Party would be complicit in bringing forward a proposal that effectively seeks to deprive people of the opportunity to continue to be on a local authority housing waiting list.
I believe the Minister of State said in committee and elsewhere that it is her intention that people should be able to move from the RAS, long-term leasing or the HAP, but if there is no longer a list, and the local authorities operate a scheme of letting priorities which is based primarily on the length of time one has spent on the waiting list, the people who avail, through necessity, of these temporary measures - RAS, which is five years, long-term leasing, which is ten or more years, or the HAP, which inevitably will be short-term - are depriving themselves of the opportunity of a long-term solution into the future.
This legislation makes no sense. It is not good legislation and it will be enormously detrimental to Irish society, condemning many people to remain in a situation in which they are living in uncertainty and their ability to avail of educational, employment and other opportunities is greatly reduced. This legislation, more than any other legislation that I have seen in my period in this House, effectively widens the gap between rich and poor and creates a situation in which the poor will be made much poorer.
The second person to indicate a wish to speak was Deputy Boyd Barrett.
Who is on the list?
You are on the list but you did not indicate. Do you want to speak?
I have an amendment. I thought you were taking the people who had amendments first.
Go ahead.
I am sorry about that. I do not know whether we are learning lessons. There are approximately 70,000 people on rent supplement and just under 30,000 on the RAS. We have seen what has happened with rent supplement in terms of the number of people now reporting as homeless and the number being put off the housing list and having to seek rent supplement. We learned today that rent supplement will be increased. Obviously, we will now see private landlords further increase prices, but excluding people who take up the housing assistance payment from the housing list does not make sense. That is what we did when the rent supplement scheme was introduced. We said the person would get another RAS property or a house from the local authority, but that has not happened, and even people on the RAS have ended up homeless. That is the reality on the ground.
In terms of what will happen with the HAP, we will reduce the numbers on the waiting lists, but the HAP is not long-term housing. Landlords can decide at some stage to pull the plug, so to speak, whether under the HAP or under the rent supplement scheme. We are dealing now with the HAP, which will go to the local authorities. While there are some merits in the HAP going to the local authorities - because people will be allowed to work, which is a positive move - something similar happened under the RAS in that people were allowed to work but some still became homeless and others were put out of their homes.
We are spending approximately €300 million on rent supplement. We will be doing the same in terms of private landlords, and it will be paid by the local authorities. We should be investing in social housing. We have a crisis which will become worse, with more people coming onto the housing waiting lists. It appears this measure will massage the figures because many people will be taken off the housing waiting list, which is almost 90,000. How many people will come off that list as a result of this measure? It is wrong. It is not permanent housing. It is not giving people the stability they need. People have to live locally and get to schools. It is wrong that we are allowing this to happen. My fear is that it will not change the situation in terms of the way landlords have behaved simply because it will go to the local authorities. In many ways it appears to be a good way forward, but I cannot agree with taking people off the housing list.
I strongly support my colleague, Deputy Ó Fearghaíl, in recommending this amendment. As he has said, this is nothing but a sleight of hand. It is a gross misrepresentation of the facts, and that is what will ensue. There are almost 100,000 people on housing waiting lists throughout the country and they are entitled to, and would expect, a permanent solution to their problems. This measure offers a temporary solution. Why then should it be represented as a permanent solution when plainly it is not? That is not to detract or deflect from what the Minister of State has proposed regarding the HAP. It is a temporary solution. It is a stepping stone to a more permanent solution, and if that is the thrust of what the Minister of State is proposing, why has she not included in the Bill wording to the effect that nobody who avails of the HAP system can be taken off the list? Is it such that anybody who refuses to accept a proposal such as this will be penalised or will lose points within the existing local authority system for not accepting a solution to their housing need? This solution is temporary but there is no sleight of hand or misrepresentation of the facts on the existing list, which numbers almost 100,000.
It is our obligation to provide for their needs in a way that amounts to a permanent solution to the unfortunate predicament in which they find themselves. For the Minister of State to stand over removing people who avail of the housing assistance payment from the housing waiting lists is, to say the least, unbelievable. I expected that, as this was raised on Committee Stage, the Minister of State and her officials would have availed of the opportunity to amend the Bill in this regard. In the absence of that, will she now accept this amendment and right what will be a wrong in the sense that the public may believe that a permanent solution has been found for up to 70,000 people when in fact nothing could be further from the truth?
Section 37 is nothing less than a counter-revolution in the provision of social housing. It is the most retrograde and backward step imaginable in that it attempts to turn what it is a temporary necessity owing to the failure of Governments, including the previous one, to provide council housing into a permanent measure and to institutionalise the outsourcing and privatisation of social housing to the private sector. That is appalling. Everything else that the Government says or claims it proposes to do to try to address the current crisis is undermined and undone by this measure. This takes us to a place that the late Margaret Thatcher could only have dreamed of in terms of wholesale, full-scale privatisation of social housing.
This section, combined with the Minister of State's earlier resistance to giving a firm commitment to reinvest all of the proceeds from tenant purchases back into the provision of social housing and the Government's cries that it does not have the money to engage in large-scale direct provision of council housing, which is necessary - and is what the Minister of State has said she would favour in an ideal world but says we cannot afford - is a recipe for full-scale privatisation of housing. The effective privatisation of the housing market by Fianna Fáil, although not set down in legal statute, is what created the ingredients for the current crisis, the property bubble and the crash that almost destroyed our economy, for which we are now paying a terrible price. Fianna Fáil did it effectively and this Government is now institutionalising what it did effectively and making it law. Accommodation owned by a private landlord and subject to a housing assistance payment arrangement with the council is not social housing.
Apart from the utterly retrograde, privatising thrust of this section, it is not going to work. It indicates a failure to grasp what is currently going on. I am sure the Minister of State is in contact with the local authorities on this issue, which makes it more difficult to understand the reason she would put this in legislation. Everybody knows and is finally acknowledging that private landlords are walking away. All of the evidence suggests that even those who have not walked away could walk at any time because they can command higher rents elsewhere. How can the Minister of State possibly say that an arrangement between a private landlord and a local authority, from which arrangement a landlord can walk at any time if it is possible for him or her to make more money elsewhere, represents a permanent solution to people's housing need? It does not, yet this Bill says it does. The Bill states that the provision of social housing assistance under the relevant Part shall be deemed to be an appropriate form of social housing support. It is not. I do not know how the Minister of State can claim it is when she has acknowledged that these types of arrangement are temporary. In response to questions during the past year on the need to raise the rent caps, the Minister, Deputy Burton, rightly said, although somewhat disingenuously, that we cannot do that because we do not want to continue to pour money into the pockets of private landlords. We agree. The only way to avoid doing that is to provide social housing, but what the Minister of State is proposing to do is to institutionalise the arrangement through which we pour money into the pockets of private landlords and call that permanent social housing provision. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that this is a recipe for a return to slum landlordism.
While some of the landlords engaged in RAS arrangements are good, reasonable and so on, others are not. Some of the accommodation is sub-standard and there are huge problems in terms of who is directly in charge of ensuring that accommodation is up to standard. While tenants can call in the environmental health officer or local authority in respect of housing that is unsuitable, many are afraid to do so because if they do their landlord will pull out of the RAS arrangement, leaving them homeless. The council would then have a housing obligation to those people which it could not fulfil, because it currently cannot fulfil it for anybody, even those in the most dire of circumstances.
One of the justifications for the housing assistance payment is to ensure that people in receipt of rent allowance are not disincentivised from working, which is positive. Last Thursday, along with dozens of families who are either homeless, threatened with homelessness or on the housing list for up to 16 years, I slept in a sleeping bag outside Dún Loaghaire-Rathdown County Council. At 7 a.m. the following morning, approximately half of the people there left to go to work. Some of these people are homeless but they work. The homeless are the people who are working. They are not just people who are dependant on social welfare; some are on low incomes, in part-time jobs and so on.
This provision will not address the crisis. In fact, it is institutionalising the problem that produced the crisis in the first instance - namely, dependance on the private sector. All that is required is that one word be changed to acknowledge that this is a temporary measure, so that anybody who is forced into an arrangement which is temporary and is not appropriate or suitable has the comfort of knowing that while housing is currently not available, they are entitled to a council house and the authority is moving to provide them with those houses. That is what we need. This has to be changed; otherwise, the Bill cannot be supported. If it is not changed, everything else in the Bill becomes decorative and what we will actually have is a counter-revolution in social housing of which the late Margaret Thatcher would be proud.
I, too, support Deputy Ó Fearghaíl's amendment. I cannot believe what is being provided for in this Bill, particularly in this provision. My experience of the RAS in South Tipperary County Council has been good. The officials there do a very good job. What is being proposed is a trick of the loop. The Minister of State could be a magician rather than the Minister of State with responsibility for housing.
The Minister of State has made a number of announcements on radio and television about additional moneys she has acquired for the construction of houses so as to make some kind of dent in the housing list. We are all aware of the seriousness of the situation. What is proposed is a real trick of the loop. If the Minister of State manages to have thousands banished form the housing list she will be a wonder woman, thereby taking that title from the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton. It would be unbelievable.
I do not believe the Labour Party Deputies will troop in here tonight and vote for this. I come from Clonmel, a very proud town where the Labour Party originated. Someone suggested the members of the Labour Party will be coming back here in a minibus after the next election but I believe they will be coming back on a tandem bicycle. None of them will be coming back. The Labour Party had such a proud record of service, especially on housing and such issues. I do not know how Labour Ministers could introduce this kind of legislation.
I do know who is in charge in the Department. Is it the towering Minister, Deputy Hogan, affectionately known as Big Phil, who is leaving these shores? The Minister of State will not have any place to go and will have to remain in Limerick. God help her party when the electorate gets it because-----
We got three seats there.
Well done. However, I do not know whether the Labour Party will hold on to them owing to this legislation. It is a good job the party did not pass it three weeks ago. If it had done so, it would be minus three seats. I suppose we should not be making light of this. Well done to the Labour Party on its three seats and well done to the successful individuals — God bless them and more power to them. I am thinking, however, of the proud history of Clonmel, where the Labour Party was founded. Its members did not even go down there to commemorate the party's 100th anniversary. They shied away. It was not that we were not going to be nice to them; we are not that kind of people. They would be welcome.
The Deputy should stick to the Bill.
I am sticking to the Bill. I am just saying I cannot believe a Labour Minister of State would introduce such a trick of the loop - one could not call it anything else - just to banish 70,000 people from the housing list. During the election campaign, the party stated on a poster that it created 70,000 jobs but someone wrote “in Canada” on one of them. This Bill represents another "to hell or to Connacht" policy by the Labour Party. I am totally appalled by it and abhor it. I will certainly be voting against it and making my views known. I do not know whether the officials are pushing this or whether the Labour Party is not keeping an eye on them. I do not want to blame the officials unduly but the policy is coming from somewhere. I cannot believe it had its origins among any Labour Ministers.
I support the points that have been made so eloquently by colleagues on section 37. I have been dealing with people in RAS tenancies for eight or nine years. They would have been on the housing list for 12 or 14 years. The Minister of State knows well that the RAS has completely collapsed in Dublin and does not really exist anymore. Nobody is opting for it and no landlord is interested in it. Tenants are very wary of it. The reason they are wary is that they have no security of tenure. Even after seven, eight or nine years in a district, and with children going to a particular school and with family arrangements being made on the basis of a long-term tenancy, people still expect to be allocated a local authority home, be it in the jurisdiction of Dublin City Council or, in my case, Fingal County Council. That is what tenants are aiming for. It would be very retrograde step if, at the wave of a wand, the 78,000 people passing from rent supplement to HAP were now deemed to be housed. Our experience as representatives is directly the opposite because of the insecurity and uncertainty that arise. As I stated earlier, children and parents both endure unacceptable stress and tension.
On Committee Stage, colleagues raised this matter extensively. I urge the Minister of State to simply accept the amendment and proceed on that basis. We are still thinking of the raft of reports we have had. We should have been doing what I suggest three to six years ago in regard to social housing. People are still thinking about a way forward to allow us to meet the urgent needs of the 90,000 families on the social housing list. However, this sleight of hand, as a colleague called it, is not a solution.
I very strongly support this amendment. It is really beyond belief that the Minister of State would seek to make this legislative provision. It is extraordinary that she would seek to absolve the State of responsibility for providing public housing. It brings to mind what the Government is doing in the health area, where the thrust of policy is now to privatise our public health service and for the State to wash its hands of responsibility for the provision of public health services. In effect, this is what the provision in the Bill is doing. It is allowing the Government to walk away and say the provision of a public housing programme is no longer the responsibility of the State.
I was not aware that the Labour Party, in particular, favoured small government and the wholesale privatisation of public services, but it seems that is actually what is happening here. As other speakers have said, and as we were constantly reminded by the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, and the current Minister responsible for housing, rent supplement was a temporary measure that was never intended as a substitute for a proper public housing programme. For the Minister to walk away from that responsibility and hand it over to the private sector is shocking. I agree with others who have said that, on the basis of this provision alone, this Bill deserves to be voted down.
I do not know why the Minister has not taken the time to rethink this after the strong arguments that were made on Committee Stage. It is really regrettable that, by all indications, there is no budge all. The Minister has not taken on board the points that were made very strongly by the several members at meetings of the committee.
It would be entirely different if we had a tightly regulated housing market here, with the State taking responsibility for the public good, as in the provision of an adequate number of houses, and regulating the market. Such a model operates in some parts of Europe. In those regions, large numbers of people live their entire lives in rented accommodation but do so in a market that is very tightly regulated by their state. They have security of tenure and are free to live for 30, 40 or 50 years in accommodation with security underpinned by law. Moreover, there are strict rent controls. However, we do not have such conditions in Ireland. Rather, we have a very lightly regulated housing market. For that reason, it makes it all the more shocking that the Government is seeking to hand over responsibility for what should be a key public service to the private sector.
The state of so much of the private rental accommodation is absolutely appalling. It is disgraceful that the State is paying money into the pockets of landlords who keep their accommodation in such disgraceful conditions. The State has a hands-off approach to this. While we know there are standards set down in theory, we know there is little or no adherence to those standards in practice. For example, there is but one environmental health officer responsible for ensuring standards are met on the north side of Dublin. If tenants are prepared to take the risk of reporting unsuitable accommodation - very few are because it is so extraordinarily difficult to come across a landlord who is prepared to make accommodation available to somebody on rent supplement - they must wait weeks or, in some cases, months for any kind of response from the local authority, again because of the lack of prioritisation in this area, the arm's-length approach to ensuring the maintenance of proper standards by the Government, and the restriction of funding for the environmental health service.
I am shocked that the Minister of State is proposing to walk away from responsibilities. One of the key responsibilities of any socially minded, concerned Government is to ensure the existence of adequate public services, particularly in the area of housing, which is so central to all our lives.
It is a disgrace that the Government would seek to do this. I would appeal to the Minister of State very strongly to pull back from this, not to be led by the nose by her Fine Gael colleagues in this regard, to stand up to them and to reject this.
Section 37 goes to the heart of this. It was said by Deputy Cowen that this needs to be revised because it is a mistake. The problem is it is not a mistake. The Minister of State is here doing the bidding of Fine Gael and it is leaving her here. It is not a mistake. It is a very deliberate political action that is going to fundamentally change the landscape of social housing now and into the future.
It is appalling because what the Government is doing is abandoning people on housing waiting lists to the markets. It is abandoning them to their own devices to find accommodation, to plead with landlords and for those landlords to then engage with the local authorities. If people would not do this for the higher amounts that were allowed under RAS, for the life of me, I cannot figure out what landlords are going to suddenly appear who will present themselves to the local authorities around the country and offer themselves for hundreds of euro less a month than they can get in market rents, particularly in the large urban areas.
We are going to leave people very vulnerable. I handed the Taoiseach a list yesterday of a dozen people in my area as case studies of the kind of issues people face every day. One woman has a new baby and she was actually out looking for accommodation while she was in labour. She still has not been housed and she cannot register her baby because she is of no fixed abode. She is just a normal person, trying to live. She has been renting for several years and has been on the housing list for six or seven years. Every one of these people suffers because the rents in the area are hundreds of euro above the rent caps. Yet, these people are being told to go and find accommodation that simply is not there.
When this section is read side-by-side with what is intended in regard to the amount of money that is going to be provided, it is clear people are going to have to scrap for substandard accommodation because there simply will not be anything available, certainly in the short term. This is not just a policy about people finding temporary accommodation. This is about the social conditions under which children in this country are going to be reared into the future, when there will be no certainty. We will not even be able to plan school accommodation because people will have to keep on moving as the landlords decide they want their houses back, for whatever reason. This is a social disaster that the Minister of State is proposing and I do not believe it is an accident.
I said yesterday that housing authorities will now become housing support agencies but that would be in a very minimalist way. The person will have to go and find the accommodation themselves. It will no longer be a situation where somebody on a housing waiting list will ever aspire to having a home. They may well get temporary rented accommodation but it will not be a home. That has profound consequences.
I believe this is a seminal moment. This is a day we will look back to and say it was the day the mistake was made, and this Minister of State will be the one who is referred to. She must go back and revisit this. It is absolutely unacceptable.
One of the bright things that happened in the last year and a half was when President Michael D. Higgins went to the European Parliament and set out a vision for the kind of social Europe we should have. We are included in that Europe. It was a day when we should all have been very proud. He referred widely to Jürgen Habermas, the German philosopher who had talked about how the German Government was insisting that the priority was about stabilising budgets but doing so at individual state level, where it was going to be at the expense of social security systems, public services and collective goods. That is exactly what has been happening. It is so much Frankfurt's way, and this is so much about the markets and a market-driven response to something that has serious social consequences. If the Minister of State subscribes to the principles the Labour Party was set up under, she cannot allow this situation to arise where people, including very vulnerable people, are being effectively abandoned to the markets.
On a point of order, I want to correct the record in regard to Deputy Catherine Murphy's contribution. I did not say it was a mistake. I said it must be a mistake because I could not understand, as I and others have alluded to, that no reference or message has been received by the Labour Party from the electorate in regard to the recent election result. One of its core social requirements in the provision of housing is to be abandoned with the proposals contained in this legislation. In this amendment, where we are asking for one word to be changed, that one word means a lot. Obviously, it does not mean much to the proposers of the legislation.
Deputy Ruth Coppinger
I am absolutely appalled there is nobody from the media here. This is an incredibly important social issue and I hope it does not go unreported this evening. I am also appalled there is nobody here from Labour or Fine Gael to even stand over such a policy.
Has the Labour Party learned nothing from the electoral hiding it got two weeks ago? It will go into extinction if it tries to carry through this sort of a policy. Housing emerged as one of the biggest issues on the doorsteps, as all of the Deputies here will know. I have sat here all day, following this Bill and intervening in the debate. What we have in front of us is a housing Bill with no houses. Now, the latest thing the Government has put in front of us is that it is going to massage the waiting lists out of existence and massage the figures. As it did with JobBridge and with the unemployment figures, it is now going to put people into a category which suggests they are adequately housed.
I would correct one thing. It is not a counterrevolution; it is just a continuation of what I have seen on the councils for the past 11 years, where housing has been slowly but surely privatised. Dublin City Council built 29 houses last year. This is not new; rather, it is a continuation. Fianna Fáil started it and, now, Fine Gael and Labour are continuing it. Fingal County Council, in my own area, is going to build 25 houses this year when we have up to 10,000 on the housing list.
The only thing that comforts me is that it is not going to work. Where is the Minister of State going to find these private landlords who want to take families? Has she not copped on to the problem that has been going on here for the last few years? There is a rent bubble out there and there is no way that landlords want to take in families when they can get money in the private sector at a much higher rate.
How dare the Government say to the taxpayers that it will shovel all of their money into housing people at inordinate cost with private landlords who have been getting some €400 million from this scheme every year, and it used to be €500 million until the Government implemented its cuts. How dare it continue that policy. The average rent in Dublin 15, as elsewhere, is approximately €1,300 for a family-type house, and €1,400 for anything bigger. The Government would be putting €1,000 a month into housing families in such situations, money it could be using to build homes and then get rent back.
How anyone could say this makes economic sense is beyond me. The only thing that makes sense is that it constitutes further capitulation to landlords who have close connections with Fine Gael and now it seems the Labour Party. The Minister for Social Protection today announced rent payments would be increased on a case by case basis; therefore, people will still have to go begging to their local community welfare officer without rent controls being introduced at the same time. The Government seems to be happy to keep shovelling money in the direction of private landlords that could be used to build homes. I have seen it all. Nobody from the Labour Party will be sitting on the other side after the next general election. The difference between now and previous times when the Labour Party could exit the coalition for a while, lick its wounds and then slither back in is that there is now competition from others on the left. It appears to have learned nothing from the message delivered by the electorate.
I find the language used by the Deputy particularly objectionable, but I will deal with the issues raised. As I have no intention of licking wounds or slithering anywhere, I hope she will use slightly more understanding language in respect of what we do here. This is a serious forum in which we make law.
I was talking about the Labour Party after it had been in coalition.
The word "arrogant" is often used, but I suggest the Deputy be careful as she is new. I would not use such language if I was her.
Let me read the amendment because there has been a total over-reaction to what the legislation contains. What Deputies Barry Cowen, Seán Ó Fearghaíl and Dessie Ellis are seeking to do is change the wording as follows. Section 35 states "the provision of housing assistance under this Part shall be deemed to be an appropriate form of social housing support for a household that is determined by a housing authority under the said section 20 to be qualified for such support". What the Deputies are seeking to do is to say it would not be an appropriate form of social housing support. I am not saying this is a permanent solution to people's housing issues, but let us not put in the legislation something that is not in it. I am not saying that under the Bill we will suddenly build a pile of houses because we are not going to do so. There is an issue with supply, as I have acknowledged, and I have spoken in various debates about how we might address it. The Bill is not the answer to all housing issues.
The cases described by many Deputies arise under the current rent supplement scheme. They involve people who are at risk of being kicked out of their houses because of the current rent supplement scheme which has developed, as many Deputies rightly said, into a so-called long-term solution to their problems. There will still be under the Department of Social Protection a short-term rent supplement scheme which is what it should be about for those who find themselves urgently in need of housing. What the Bill is attempting to do is to give some security to those in so-called short-term rent supplement schemes and allow them, for example, to go back to work. We had a reasonable discussion on the purpose of the legislation on Second Stage, but it is not meant to provide the only long-term solution to anybody's housing problems. In fact, the word "permanent" is not used anywhere in the legislation.
Of course, we have issues of supply and there are financial constraints which were also faced by the previous Government in the last couple of years of its life, regardless of who was at fault, but we will move away from them as quickly as we can and we will do so by trying to fix the economy. We cannot pay for social housing to the extent that it is required from current capital budgets. As that is the reality, we must find ways of addressing the issue of supply.
Deputy Ruth Coppinger talked about the Labour Party's way, but if she looks at other countries, including the Nordic countries which have had social democratic governments and systems in place for years, she will see that they have operated systems which involve a mix, with some housing being directly funded by the state through local authorities, some provided through a very large voluntary housing sector and some by private owners. I take the point that we need much greater security of tenure for people who find themselves in that position and we need to learn from neighbouring countries in that regard. That is why we are amending the Residential Tenancies Act and I am willing to look at the issue of rent controls and have asked the Housing Agency to carry out a short review which will be ready for us in about one month. I am not saying we do not need to regulate the private sector. Of course, we need to regulate it. I am certainly not happy with the fact that more and more money has been poured into the pockets of private landlords without proper controls. At least with this Bill the local authorities will have some control over what happens.
Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett spoke about slum landlordism, while Deputy Róisín Shortall spoke about the bad conditions in which people were living. That is why we are dealing with the issue of regulation and amending the Residential Tenancies Act. I heard people say recently on "Liveline" with Joe Duffy that we should row back on standards and allow for bedsits that did not have sanitary facilities. I am not giving into this. I am not giving into the landlord class that is suggesting I should do so.
There is very little enforcement.
I have heard Dublin Deputies say enforcement in parts of Dublin is very good. I accept that it might not be in all parts of the city, but the regulations were enforced in many areas in which substandard accommodation was provided for private tenants. I am sure we could provide more resources and funding, but it is happening.
Let us get real about what is actually included in this section. It is not stating it is a permanent solution to people's housing problems, but it is stating it is an appropriate form of social housing support. If we were to take this out and say it was not an appropriate form of social housing support-----
Just say "temporary".
That is not included in the amendment which states it should not be regarded as an appropriate form of social housing support. If we were to take this out, it would fundamentally undermine the purpose of the HAP scheme, one of the core objectives of which is to bring all social housing supports, of which HAP is one, under the umbrella of local government. This will enable the State to provide a more integrated and streamlined service for households seeking support to meet their housing needs. I have said they will be eligible for transfer to a local authority house.
That is slightly different.
The Deputy is fixated on lists, but many of those in receipt of rent supplement about which he is talking have been on housing waiting lists for ten years or more. What we want to do is ensure people can have access to a local authority house. I am not, therefore, trying to massage figures, rather I am trying to introduce a system that will be more coherent for those who need social housing support. That is the purpose of the legislation. There has been a complete misinterpretation in this part of the debate of what is stated in the section. Up to now, we have had reasonable debates on it. This is a genuine misrepresentation of what we are doing.
I thank the Minister of State for her response. She says the proposed amendment and the subsequent explanation given by me and others misrepresent the facts as she understands them. She has seen fit to quote section 35 in respect of the proposal to insert the word "not" in place of the word "shall". Section 35 states:
Subject to regulations made for the purposes of subsection (4)(f) of section 20 of the Act of 2009, the provision of housing assistance under this Part shall be deemed to be an appropriate form of social housing support for a household that is determined by a housing authority under the said section 20 to be qualified for such support.
A housing support is the same as a housing need or a housing requirement. Those on a local authority housing list have a housing need. Along with the Minister of State, we have a responsibility in so far as we can to offer appropriate funding and supports to local authorities to meet the requirements of those on the lists. As we all know from regular interaction with our constituents, this is one of the greatest needs and demands of society, in addition to the problems people face on foot of Government decisions regarding a property tax and water charges and the costs associated with same, which are far in excess of what the supposed average was to be-----
The Deputy's time is up.
I would appreciate being allowed to continue to put a final question because, to be fair, the previous Acting Chairmen have been accommodating due to the seriousness of the debate. They were mindful that this is one of the major issues for their constituents. This was outlined to all of us in no uncertain terms by our constituents during the recent elections.
Standing Orders dictate that the Deputy has two minutes.
Irrespective of the Minister of State believing we have misrepresented the position in the amendment, there has been no misrepresentation because she has not said in response to me or any other Member regarding what has been raised that there is any intention on the part of local authorities to alter this. The only intention is that the housing requirements will be adhered to by virtue of this scheme, which is to be commended, but it is not a permanent solution. One cannot solve a permanent problem with a temporary solution and, therefore, the public should be well aware that those who remain with a housing need will continue to have a permanent requirement and the Minister of State has been charged with the responsibility to offer solutions in this regard. Unfortunately, this provision does not provide a solution. I remain committed to the amendment and ask Members to support it.
One of the problems is the Minister of State might genuinely believe that this will not change anything and the use of the words "shall not" does not alter anything. She may believe the word "appropriate" is enough but this will come down to the interpretation of local authority managers and not hers. Managers will see this as a giving them a green light to say this is appropriate accommodation and once that happens, applicants will be removed from the housing waiting lists. Lo and behold, the numbers will be massaged and the almost 90,000 on the lists currently will suddenly reduce to so many thousand.
The same happened with RAS. Local authority managers interpreted the implementation of the scheme their own way. I recall this argument. When people went on to the RAS, they were told they would be given another RAS property at the end of their lease and they would never be evicted. They were told they would be given local authority housing if none was available but now they are homeless. From 2011 onwards, RAS recipients were removed from the housing list. The issue is not the Minister of State's interpretation but that of managers in housing departments. They will determine where people will end up and that is the problem.
Despite the Minister of State's assurances, this is a counter revolution. I made the point strongly that the effective privatisation of housing started under Fianna Fáil, as she acknowledged, but that the change wrought by this provision is that what was held to be a temporary measure will become a permanent measure. If Members listen carefully to what the Minister of State said, it will not just be down to the interpretation of county managers. She let the cat out of the bag because she said this will be deemed to be social housing and then people can apply for a transfer - that is, once a client is in one of these arrangements, he or she is off the housing waiting list. I am certain that is what she just said. One can apply for a transfer but one will be off the list and that is the counter revolution because that means privatised, outsourced social housing to landlords and the market will be deemed to be the same as being in a council house. However, it is not. This legislation suggests that it is and it is the legal underpinning for the wholesale outsourcing and privatisation of social housing because privatised social housing will be deemed to be the same as a council house. The counter revolution is in that sleight of hand.
There is further reason to believe this will be the case. When RAS was set up, applicants were told they would be on the scheme for four years and at the end of that time, they would get a council house. Then a directive issued as a result of a policy document produced by the Government in 2012, which said if one was on the RAS, one was deemed to be housed. There was murder. The clients were put on a fixed transfer list but everybody will be taken off the list at the end of four years. That is what this does. The reason I did not table an amendment to the section is I was sleeping outside the council offices, which we all end up having to do, if we do not do something about this on Thursday and Friday. If what we are alleging is not true, the Minister of State should insert the word "temporary" in the Seanad and give us an assurance that this provision will be temporary and that people who take up the HAP arrangement will not be taken off the waiting lists. If she does that, our concern will be addressed.
Perhaps for all our sakes, the Minister of State might clarify what she said earlier. Most of us interpret this as providing that once people are in receipt of HAP, their need for housing will be deemed to have been met and, therefore, they will come off the housing list. Is that the case? The key issue is whether a person retains an entitlement to local authority housing. Does he or she come off the list once he or she in receipt of HAP? If so, this is a major departure from what we all understand to be social housing and the State's responsibility to those who are not in a position to provide housing for themselves.
My question is similar and the Minister of State can clear this up immediately. Will people remain on the housing waiting lists if they are in receipt of HAP? That is a clear and simple question to answer. If so, we would not raise this issue. As Deputy Boyd Barrett said, the council interpreted RAS as meaning recipients were adequately housed and they were removed from the housing waiting lists. Now we are witnessing all the problems that has created. I cannot understand why this is being put forward because no private housing is available. RAS is defunct and, as previous speakers said, landlords do not want to participate, which has led to people becoming homeless. I know council tenants who are paying under the table to remain in RAS. The entire system is corrupt. If the Minister of State clarifies this, we will all be happy.
The fact that someone is on a waiting list and has been in receipt of rent supplement for a number of years does not solve his or her problem. He or she is still waiting and still does not have a State supplied house.
At least he or she has an entitlement.
Housing supply will solve the problem and that is the issue that has been facing all of us over a number of years. I said that if one is on the HAP scheme, one will be entitled to transfer to a local authority house.
But one will be off the waiting list.
It depends on what one calls the list.
The transfer list is the transfer list.
It is a time-based list.
It is not time-based in every local authority.
The Minister has the floor.
For example, all local authorities prioritise homelessness.
There is a queue.
It depends on how lists are operated but, as I understand it, there is a scheme of house letting priority.
As I understand it, there is a scheme of housing letting priority-----
A housing requirement or need.
-----which I believe is the correct terminology. There is nothing in that scheme that states one is number whatever on a list; that is not required.
There is. That is the way it works.
That is what the priority list is.
In my local authority there is no list that puts a number on one's back, as in one is in such-and-such a place.
The Minister should check that. Everybody knows there is.
People are getting letters telling them they are number 1,250, for example, on the list.
I understood that was changed in the Dublin area. Perhaps it has not.
No. It was changed to that in the Dublin city area.
The Minister is putting people to the back of the queue.
They are being taken off the queue.
My understanding is that there is a scheme of letting priority and that if a person is in HAP, they are entitled to transfer into a local authority house when one appropriate to their needs becomes available.
One rents the house one gets.
The Minister is missing something. If one comes off rental supplement and goes into HAP, one must reapply to get a transfer. It is a different system.
Is it not correct that every local authority has a transfer list and a transfer system? I am suggesting that the person is eligible.
Yes, but one can only get on it for overcrowding or medical reasons.
They will be eligible to be transferred into a local authority house.
No, they are taken off the housing list.
That concludes the debate on amendment No. 19.
As the proposer of the amendment, I am pressing the amendment in light of the failure of the Minister to respond adequately.
Amendment put.
The Dáil divided by electronic means.
In view of the importance of this issue-----
As a duly-appointed teller-----
(Interruptions).
Sit down, Deputy Ellis.
-----I propose under Standing Order 69 that the vote be taken by other than electronic means in light of the failure of the Government to take account of the recent election when it was asked to follow social values and justice. It is now proceeding to disappear thousands of people off the waiting lists by way of the proposals before us this evening.
What are we talking about here? Does the Deputy want a walk-through vote?
I ask for a walk through.
As one of those who tabled the amendment, I call for a walk-through division.
Amendment put:
The Dáil divided: Tá, 45; Níl, 77.
Tá
- Adams, Gerry.
- Boyd Barrett, Richard.
- Broughan, Thomas P.
- Calleary, Dara.
- Collins, Joan.
- Colreavy, Michael.
- Coppinger, Ruth.
- Cowen, Barry.
- Crowe, Seán.
- Daly, Clare.
- Doherty, Pearse.
- Donnelly, Stephen S.
- Dooley, Timmy.
- Ellis, Dessie.
- Ferris, Martin.
- Fleming, Sean.
- Grealish, Noel.
- Halligan, John.
- Healy, Seamus.
- Healy-Rae, Michael.
- Higgins, Joe.
- Kelleher, Billy.
- Kirk, Seamus.
- Kitt, Michael P.
- McConalogue, Charlie.
- McGrath, Finian.
- McGrath, Michael.
- McGuinness, John.
- McLellan, Sandra.
- Martin, Micheál.
- Murphy, Catherine.
- Naughten, Denis.
- Ó Caoláin, Caoimhghín.
- Ó Cuív, Éamon.
- Ó Fearghaíl, Seán.
- Ó Snodaigh, Aengus.
- O'Sullivan, Maureen.
- Pringle, Thomas.
- Ross, Shane.
- Shortall, Róisín.
- Smith, Brendan.
- Stanley, Brian.
- Tóibín, Peadar.
- Troy, Robert.
- Wallace, Mick.
Níl
- Bannon, James.
- Barry, Tom.
- Breen, Pat.
- Bruton, Richard.
- Butler, Ray.
- Buttimer, Jerry.
- Byrne, Catherine.
- Byrne, Eric.
- Cannon, Ciarán.
- Carey, Joe.
- Coffey, Paudie.
- Collins, Áine.
- Conaghan, Michael.
- Conlan, Seán.
- Connaughton, Paul J.
- Conway, Ciara.
- Coonan, Noel.
- Coveney, Simon.
- Daly, Jim.
- Deasy, John.
- Deering, Pat.
- Doherty, Regina.
- Dowds, Robert.
- Doyle, Andrew.
- Durkan, Bernard J.
- English, Damien.
- Feighan, Frank.
- Ferris, Anne.
- Fitzgerald, Frances.
- Gilmore, Eamon.
- Griffin, Brendan.
- Hannigan, Dominic.
- Harrington, Noel.
- Hayes, Tom.
- Heydon, Martin.
- Howlin, Brendan.
- Humphreys, Heather.
- Humphreys, Kevin.
- Keating, Derek.
- Kenny, Seán.
- Kyne, Seán.
- Lawlor, Anthony.
- Lynch, Kathleen.
- Lyons, John.
- McEntee, Helen.
- McFadden, Gabrielle.
- McGinley, Dinny.
- McHugh, Joe.
- McLoughlin, Tony.
- McNamara, Michael.
- Maloney, Eamonn.
- Mitchell O'Connor, Mary.
- Mulherin, Michelle.
- Murphy, Dara.
- Murphy, Eoghan.
- Nash, Gerald.
- Neville, Dan.
- Noonan, Michael.
- Ó Ríordáin, Aodhán.
- O'Donnell, Kieran.
- O'Dowd, Fergus.
- O'Mahony, John.
- O'Reilly, Joe.
- O'Sullivan, Jan.
- Perry, John.
- Phelan, Ann.
- Phelan, John Paul.
- Reilly, James.
- Ring, Michael.
- Ryan, Brendan.
- Shatter, Alan.
- Spring, Arthur.
- Stagg, Emmet.
- Tuffy, Joanna.
- Varadkar, Leo.
- Walsh, Brian.
- White, Alex.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Barry Cowen and Aengus Ó Snodaigh;; Níl, Deputies Joe Carey and Emmet Stagg..
Amendment declared lost.
Amendment No. 20 in the name of Deputy Ellis arises out of committee proceedings. Amendments Nos. 20 and 21, 23 to 26, inclusive, and 29 to 32, inclusive, form a composite proposal and may be discussed together.
I move amendment No. 20:
In page 49, to delete lines 32 and 33 and substitute the following:
“(a) the housing authority concerned shall source dwellings in respect of which they will seek to place people under the housing assistance scheme,”.
I am aware that we have issues over HAP and we have just had arguments on the previous grouping. However, I do not understand why, with the introduction of HAP, we did not go the full hog and give local authorities the ability to source accommodation for tenants or would-be tenants. Over the past while, I have seen people travelling around, some of them with children and some of them pregnant, seeking places to rent. Some of these people are living in cars while they try to source a place. That is the situation.
The gist of most of these amendments is that the local authorities should take a lead role in sourcing accommodation. They should use the resources available to them to do this. They have the computers, skills and means to do it. Many of the people we are talking about do not have these means, but they are being forced to travel all over the city looking for accommodation. I believe local authorities are better placed to source landlords and maintain a list of accommodation that might be available over a period. The local authorities are best placed to build up this intelligence in terms of landlords and properties. People should not be forced to source it themselves.
Local authorities deal with the situation of the homeless in general. Up to recently, we had in the order of 200 people a day in hotels sourced by the local authority, but even officials in the homeless sections of the local authorities are having problems sourcing these places. We can imagine the cost of this. If 200 families require accommodation on a given night at a cost of approximately €80 per room, this means €16,000 a day is being spent on this accommodation. This is a problem. Trying to find this accommodation is a major issue and that is the problem these amendments try to resolve.
The decision to push through the section we have just dealt with will cause blue murder. When word filters out that people who have been on lists for ten or 12 years are no longer on a list, there will be uproar. That said, the Government seems hell bent on moving in this direction. Perhaps, if word gets out, there is some chance it will reconsider this before the Bill goes to the Seanad. Otherwise, the anger that will be directed at the Government for what has just been done will be extraordinary.
If the Government is hell bent on this path, the least it can do is prove its proposals can work. To be honest, if it was to ring local government officials tomorrow, they would tell it the proposals will not work. However, it could try to prove they could work by requiring local authorities and their officials, when they decide people must find private rental accommodation at the level of HAP set, to go and source the accommodation themselves. If the local authorities went to source it, they would find that it would cost hundreds of euro more than the current rent caps, that is if any accommodation could be found. In most cases, accommodation will not be available. No matter how sophisticated, well trained and well intentioned and resourced housing departments are, they will not be able to find accommodation. This is the challenge for the Minister of State.
I suggest the Minister of State should contact her local authority in Limerick to find out what is going on. I can tell her that my clinic is like an extension of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council's housing department. Such is the level of interaction between us that the director of housing asked me the other day whether we were taking over his department. This is the level of interaction on crisis situations at this time. This all comes down to the fact that accommodation cannot be found. It is not available. However, people in desperate situations, with families and illness and so on, are told to go and find private rental accommodation for the HAP.
I could cite a litany of examples, but will only cite the latest. A man came to me yesterday having just got out of the National Rehabilitation Hospital, after having two heart attacks. He can barely talk or walk and is in a situation where he needs support. What family he has is too old and disabled itself to provide him with accommodation or the support he needs. He has been told to go and find private rented accommodation to fit the caps. This is not a joke. This situation is too serious to joke about. It is obscene and absurd that this man, in the state of health he is in, would be asked to go and find rented accommodation at the caps or for the HAP. Fantasy is not the word for what is happening. This proposal is a disaster waiting to happen.
The proposal put forward by Deputy Ellis is a minimal measure. At least it would ensure we test the water by requiring officials to go out and find this accommodation. They will not find it, but at least if they try to find it, there will be no dispute about the situation. As things stand, there is dispute. People are told to go out and find accommodation, but when they come back having been unable to find it, they are told they have not tried hard enough and should go out and try harder. If the Minister of State and the Government believe this is workable - I tell them it is not - they should agree to this amendment so that the State will be required to do what it is asking tenants to do.
If it did that, then it would find out how utterly unworkable this is. Then at least we could sit down together with the people on the housing list and come up with a plan that actually works.
Deputy Ellis spoke earlier about hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation for homeless people and the costs of same. That is an approach that some local authorities take. However, others do not take that approach to homelessness but leave it up to people to find accommodation themselves, to find a couch somewhere or, in some cases, to sleep in a car. They might not say "Sleep in your car," but that is the only option available to some people. I have certainly come across people who have been sleeping in cars. I spoke to a woman who was sleeping in her car who told me that she could see no way out. She was very depressed about it, understandably. She was concerned about where to park in order to be safe, she had nowhere to wash or get fresh clothes and nowhere to charge her phone. That has been the experience of some people; they have not been in a hotel. I do not dispute the very valid point that Deputy Ellis made about the stupidity of the costs associated with accommodating people in hotels, but this is Ireland in 2014.
A number of county managers, from Roscommon, Dún Laoghaire and Limerick, appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht recently. Each of them said that they always had to go above the rent caps to get RAS houses. They would not get such houses otherwise. Roscommon is not the worst case, as it is one of the local authority areas that is under the least pressure, but that was the uniform experience. With the RAS the criterion is 92% of the market rent, but what we are looking at here is hundreds of euro per month below that in most cases.
Often we are asking very vulnerable people to go looking for accommodation. I referred earlier to a woman who had just had a baby - how was she supposed to find accommodation? As I said before, women are not allowed out of hospital with their babies if they do not have a child seat in their car, yet they might have no home to go to. It is extraordinary. Some of the local authorities have actually become homeless agencies, because that is their main function. All day long they are dealing with people who are turning up in crisis.
I ask that a member of the Government or someone in the Department go out and look at a typical unit to let in Dublin city or county or in the counties surrounding it and speak to the people who turn up. Such people are taking the letting agents to one side and begging them to accept rent assistance payments. They are not just asking, but are begging and are promising to top them up. That is the experience, and if the Minister of State rings auctioneers they will tell her that. The houses are simply not available within the current limits. Essentially, we are asking people to go out and find such houses to give the impression that something is being done. Deputy Ellis was absolutely correct when he said that if housing officials were sent out to try to source accommodation, the Minister of State would soon get the true story back in a very direct way. That story is not being transmitted to her at the moment.
This is the number one issue for me and takes up almost all of the time in my constituency office. I can completely relate to what Deputy Boyd Barrett said in that regard. It is a human tragedy. This amendment, at least, seeks to place the obligation to find accommodation on the local authorities rather than on the individuals.
I wish to support the amendment. If we are moving in this direction, we might as well have a one-stop shop where people who require housing can go. I agree with previous speakers. This is the biggest issue taking up my time as a public representative and it is sapping the energy of all of us. The heartbreak that we are dealing with on a daily basis is appalling. Some of our staff need counselling and cannot do this job for a long period of time, and I would say that is an issue across the board.
That is also true of many housing officials.
Last night there was a public meeting on this issue in Blanchardstown and 100% of those attending were women, many of whom had children. We might as well make life somewhat easier for them. There should be one place for them to go, and if they are to be shoved into private accommodation, the council should have the responsibility of at least sourcing it for them. I will give one example to illustrate why I think this is necessary. Deputies may remember the case of the Connell family, whose picture my party shared on Facebook. They were made homeless because of a rent increase of 42%, and the family was separated, with members living in three or four different locations. The Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, who represents the area, claimed that there were properties available in Dublin 15 and argued that the family just had to look a little bit harder. That was such an insult to that family, who were spending all day, every day looking for accommodation over a three- or four-month period. Following a meeting with the Minister, the family was given the number of a landlord in the Dublin West area who did accept rent allowance, but the family had been in contact with him already and he had no properties available to rent. Nothing was produced by the Minister or her staff. The family got accommodation in the end by going public in a campaigning way. Another family took pity on them and leased an apartment to them, which is overcrowded, but better than nothing. If the Minister for Social Protection could not find private accommodation within the rent allowance limit, how the hell can we expect anybody else to be able to do it?
It is time we declared a housing emergency. If people could see the attendance at this debate tonight, they would be horrified at the lack of interest. They would also be horrified at what is being put on the table. People are now being told that they will get housing assistance payments but they will no longer be on any list for permanent accommodation. I agree with Deputy Boyd Barrett's earlier point about telling that to the dozens of people with whom we deal on a weekly basis. Perhaps this is the straw that we need to break the camel's back and get people mobilised, through a national demonstration or something of that ilk.
I am not in any way minimising the issues the Deputies are raising. I am very much aware that there are people who are finding it extremely difficult to find accommodation. I could blame it on the recession, on Fianna Fáil or whatever, but it is the reality and I recognise that. It has been happening over a long number of years. The housing lists were building up even during the Celtic tiger era.
It was never as bad as it is now.
We can all describe the situation, but what we have to do is try to find solutions. That is why we introduced the preventative measure which I mentioned a number of times in this House and which was made public over the airwaves last night and today. It applies to the greater Dublin area, and I appreciate that it does not solve the problems referred to by Deputies Cowen and Murphy. The measure is being put in place now between the Dublin local authorities and the Department of Social Protection-----
It is only a short-term measure.
-----with the assistance of Threshold. It is a response to what has been described to us as an urgent issue. People were losing their homes because rents were being increased and they were no longer meeting the cap requirements. The measure is being put in place to deal with that issue.
In terms of the specific amendments, under the rent supplement scheme people source their own accommodation, and the intention is that this would continue under the HAP system. However, that does not stop local authorities from assisting. I know that in some cases the homeless officers, in particular, have phone numbers of landlords and information on accommodation possibilities.
Organisations in the voluntary sector - Focus Ireland, the Simon Community, etc. - also help people to source accommodation. There is a proposal in respect of the Dublin area that a group of those organisations will come together with the specific aim of sourcing accommodation in the private rented sector. There is already a similar scheme in place in Cork.
I am not opposed to the provision of assistance. If we included in the legislation an obligation for local authorities to source accommodation, that would allow local authority officials to discover how difficult it is to do so, but I do not believe it would speed up the process. I am of the view that it would actually slow matters down when people are seeking to access accommodation under the HAP process. It is the responsibility of local authorities to ensure that the housing chosen by recipients under the scheme meets the relevant accommodation standard and that the landlords of these properties are tax-compliant.
I do not know if it will prove to be of any assistance in the context of the debate that previously took place, but I wish to point out that if a household has qualified for social housing support but cannot source appropriate accommodation in the private rented sector under HAP, the relevant housing authority - within current supply constraints - retains a general level of responsibility in terms of providing an appropriate form of housing support for the household. On one hand, Deputy Ellis is stating that he is concerned about access to local authority housing for people in receipt of the HAP, while on the other he is stating that it is going to be impossible to source accommodation for those in receipt of the payment. I assure him that where it is not possible to source accommodation, local authorities retain a general level of responsibility to provide people with an appropriate form of social housing. This will ensure that people's rights will be upheld.
I am not minimising the problems that exist and I am aware of their serious nature. The entire purpose of the HAP is not to make matters worse but rather to facilitate people in getting out of poverty traps, etc. The alternative is to retain the system that is already in place, with people receiving rent supplement for years. It must be remembered that rent supplement was designed as a short-term measure and that people lose it if they obtain employment. We are trying to reform the system but I accept that there are huge supply issues. I also accept that there is need for reform in other areas, particularly with regard to the rights of tenants in the private rented sector. We are working on a number of things in this regard. Describing the problem will not solve it. We must try to find various measures that will address the problem.
If local authorities were given responsibility for sourcing properties, we would really see the scale of the emergency we face. There is absolutely no doubt that many people are topping up their payments and have been doing so for some time. Increasing rent supplement without putting rent controls in place will not change that. There is still going to be a creeping effect in respect of rents. As a result, we need some form of rent control. Local authorities must be encouraged to take on a bigger role in sourcing accommodation. There is no point in their merely advising people to go here or there in search of it. If local authorities were given this responsibility, the truth about what has been happening would emerge and it would become apparent that this emergency is of a scale never before seen. The scale of what has been taking place is the very reason people are struggling to obtain rent supplement and why landlords are saying - and this type of behaviour should be outlawed - that they will not accept it. Will they now state that they will not accept the HAP? Landlords must be informed that they cannot discriminate against residents who are in receipt of rent supplement or HAP. Up to now they have been refusing to accept rent supplement.
I am of the view that we are heading into troubled waters. People have been trying to source accommodation for themselves and they have become frustrated. I know no one wants to say it but there are those who have killed themselves as a result of the pressure they have been under.
The fact that local authorities have an obligation does not solve anything. They have an obligation but they do not have the houses or the resources necessary to meet people's needs. As a result, they are informing individuals that they have nothing for them. I must stress that local authority officials, and not just public representatives, are overrun in respect of this matter. My heart goes out to housing department officials who are absolutely overrun and do not know where to turn.
The Minister of State said it was not sufficient merely to describe the problem. That is true, but we have to begin by actually trying to define it. The difficulty is that the scheme she is establishing to solve the problem will not work because the private sector will not provide for the people we are discussing. Karl Deeter is a landlord who represents other landlords and he has publicly stated that they are not going to accept what is involved here. The Government is living in cloud cuckoo land if it believes landlords are going to do what is required. There is a sector of Irish society whose members, historically, were provided with council housing. Approximately 20% to 30% of the houses built in any one year in the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s were built by the State. The figure in this regard has fallen to 1% or 2%, and that is the problem. If we do not fill the gap, there will be an emergency. That is the point at which we find ourselves. We must provide council houses rather than outsource the problem to the private sector because - apart from the enormous amount of money involved - that is just not going to work.
If the Minister of State is seeking an answer on a short-term basis, I will outline one that could be adopted in my area and, I am sure, in most others. What should be done is that all available buildings in a particular area should be identified. In my area, there is a gigantic seven-block development at Merrion Gates in Sandymount which was built by Bernard McNamara and which is currently in NAMA. Half of the accommodation in this development is empty, and because it is in public ownership, it should be used to house people on a temporary basis. There is another big Celtic tiger development, The Grange on the Stillorgan Road, which people were enticed to consider as a place to live by the phrase "Welcome to the spirit of gracious living". The empty properties in that development should also be taken over by the State. There are empty council-owned buildings in my area which need to be refurbished and in which 40 to 50 families could be accommodated on a temporary basis. This could be done throughout the country. The Minister of State needs to sit down with everyone who has a stake in this matter and ask where can people be accommodated and what resources will be needed in order to ensure that this will happen.
The Minister of State said that she does not minimise the problem. I wonder whether the Government is minimising it. All we can do is try to describe what we see every day of the week. We are here as representatives of our areas and this matter is dominating our work. I am not sure the Government acknowledges the extent of the problem.
The lack of supply of accommodation is bad for the economy. I accept that one of the positive aspects of the legislation is that the HAP, like the RAS, will in theory provide for people to return to work. However, the Bill deals with many other matters as well. I am of the view that the lack of supply to which I refer is going to damage the economy. People who are at work, like those who are unemployed, are not able to afford accommodation. This will begin life as the HAP legislation but it will very quickly become the HAP-less legislation. Landlords are not going to queue up to accept from those in receipt of the HAP hundreds of euro per month less than they could get from others. A reality check is required. The Minister of State said we were describing the problem but she has certainly not presented any solutions. This is not just a problem; it is a crisis.
Kildare was excluded from the initiative - albeit a very short-term one - that was taken and to which the Minister of State referred. Anything that can relieve the pressure that exists is welcome, but let us not over-hype initiatives of this nature as being more than they are. The initiative in question does not even extend to the areas that are affected. The situation in Cork city is every bit as bad, if not worse, than that which obtains in Dublin. The situation in Kildare is certainly as bad as in any of the Dublin local authority areas. However, Kildare has been left out of the equation. That is just not good enough. The money that was made available in the mid-Leinster region for the homeless was exhausted by March. There might be a general obligation on local authorities but this has not been backed up with the resources necessary to provide alternative accommodation, even on a temporary basis.
This is the intriguing part of the debate and it is fundamental to the whole issue of housing and homelessness. I feel sorry for the Minister of State and I empathise with her entirely because she has inherited an impossible situation. I am not making a political point - it is simply a fact of life - but this problem had its origins approximately 12 years ago when a decision was taken not to replace the housing stock at local authority level and to do everything possible to shift from the local authority for reasons that I cannot understand. The private sector and Part V regulations and so on were supposed to resolve the housing problem, but they did not work. In fact, it failed miserably. Prior to that in Kildare, for example, approximately 300 houses per annum were being built and a further 400 local authority loans were offered to people who were in the income bracket between qualifying for a local authority house and the next level up. This amounted to effectively 1,000 houses per annum in the county. There are 8,500 people on the local authority housing list at the moment and it is rising all the time.
I read a commentary that included a suggestion from some economist that people would not go back to work because they would lose rent supplement. The reality is that the rent supplement is no good to people either at work or out of work. It makes no difference because the supplement is in lieu of local authority housing. Local authority housing was the bedrock on which a large sector of our population had depended in the past. Such people could aspire to owning an affordable house. Then affordable housing went out the window and everything went over to the investment sector. Unfortunately, that sector now controls the entire market. Deputy Ellis and others spoke earlier while I was in the Chair and I could not comment at that stage. However, the fact is that this is correct. It is not the problem of the Minister of State. She did not create the problem, she inherited it. Whether there is a will to resolve it will remain to be seen but I believe the Minister of State has the will to resolve the problem and she understands it.
It is at least three years since I visited the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government first, along with others, to focus on this particular issue. The point about housing is that we should plan at least six or seven years ahead and if we do not, then we have the kind of crisis that we have now.
I see the measures taken already as being helpful but they are only stopgap measures and will not resolve the problem. We need a major focus on a local authority or public sector house-building programme, a restoration of the local authority loans fund that was available previously to people to house themselves and the provision of local authority sites, as in the past. All these combined are likely to have a far more serious impact on the issue than anything that has been done so far.
Deputy Catherine Murphy raised a particular point on the economy. Up to 20,000 jobs per annum can accrue from a reinvigorated local authority house-building programme. The question is how to do it. How can this be done without upsetting the Government's balance sheet and keeping in line with what has been done to date? We cannot simply walk into the NAMA houses and declare that we own them and that we are going to take them back. That is like a shopkeeper going through his own till and deciding to pay himself out of it. It does not work that way. We need to find a means or formula to get past that and we should do so soon.
I find myself in agreement with Deputy Durkan.
Stranger things have happened.
Efforts are under way to try to find such a fund or mechanism. However, we have the difficulty of the Government balance sheet and that obstacle is being examined.
Reference was made to the general supply issue. The Government's construction strategy is designed to increase both public and private supply and I understand there are over 70 action points in that, some 30 of which are within my area of housing and planning. That is the issue of supply.
Reference was made to a prevention strategy, in particular the strategy being rolled out in the Dublin area. I am keen to see that extended to the rest of the country and I hope we can do that as quickly as possible. However, that will involve the co-operation of the local authorities, the Department of Social Protection and voluntary organisations such as Threshold. We need such voluntary involvement to provide the telephone lines, interact with tenants and ensure that people know the measures available and can be assured that they do not have to leave if a landlord tells them they should leave.
Deputy Ellis and others made the point that perhaps local authorities were unaware and that the amendment would make local authorities more aware of how difficult it is to source accommodation at the caps. The housing assistance payment will do precisely that because the local authority will be paying the money to the landlord. The tenant portion will be collected and the local authority will transfer that in addition to the State portion to the landlord in regular payments. Therefore, they will know and will be aware if properties are unaffordable and if top-ups are what is keeping them going. That awareness will come.
I have made the argument previously that the security of payment may well mean that some landlords will see it as attractive, although they may be getting less money, because under the other scheme they were reliant on the tenant passing on the rent supplement. Many have said they were not getting their money. At least under this scheme there will be security for landlords in that sense. While I admit that they are probably getting less money, at least they will have the security of knowing that they will get it.
They are walking away from the rental accommodation scheme.
The Minister of State referred to solutions. There are solutions to everything but we have put forward proposals with regard to solutions. I realise they would take some time but they could work if they were enacted quickly, worked on and if the Cabinet would agree it. We know from all the parliamentary questions we have put that there is at least €1 billion in the strategic fund that could be used. That would deliver almost 8,000 units. This would have all the pluses in terms of getting people back to work, local authorities getting rent from the properties and taking many people off the rent supplement and rental accommodation schemes etc. These are all pluses. Let us consider the mathematics. It is not as though we will add to our national debt in any way or that we will have to argue with the troika over it.
There is money available but we need to see the will to do it. This needs to be taken to Cabinet. It needs to be put to those in Cabinet that this is an absolute crisis. There are 5,000 people homeless and 40 new families per month are reporting homelessness. People are in mortgage distress and tens of thousands of people are in danger of being made homeless. We are going to see more people losing out as a result of the introduction of the housing assistance payment because landlords are not accepting rent supplement, they are not going to accept the housing assistance payment or be tied in to a local authority. That will be the next step from them. We need to take action quickly. There are solutions to this.
Question put: "That the words proposed to be deleted stand."
The Dáil divided: Tá, 70; Níl, 38.
Tá
- Bannon, James.
- Barry, Tom.
- Breen, Pat.
- Bruton, Richard.
- Butler, Ray.
- Buttimer, Jerry.
- Byrne, Catherine.
- Byrne, Eric.
- Cannon, Ciarán.
- Carey, Joe.
- Coffey, Paudie.
- Conaghan, Michael.
- Conlan, Seán.
- Connaughton, Paul J.
- Coonan, Noel.
- Conway, Ciara.
- Coveney, Simon.
- Daly, Jim.
- Deasy, John.
- Deenihan, Jimmy.
- Deering, Pat.
- Doherty, Regina.
- Dowds, Robert.
- Doyle, Andrew.
- Durkan, Bernard J.
- English, Damien.
- Feighan, Frank.
- Ferris, Anne.
- Gilmore, Eamon.
- Griffin, Brendan.
- Harrington, Noel.
- Hayes, Tom.
- Heydon, Martin.
- Howlin, Brendan.
- Humphreys, Heather.
- Humphreys, Kevin.
- Keating, Derek.
- Kenny, Seán.
- Kyne, Seán.
- Lawlor, Anthony.
- Lynch, Kathleen.
- Lyons, John.
- McEntee, Helen.
- McGinley, Dinny.
- McHugh, Joe.
- McLoughlin, Tony.
- McNamara, Michael.
- Maloney, Eamonn.
- Mitchell O'Connor, Mary.
- Mulherin, Michelle.
- Murphy, Dara.
- Murphy, Eoghan.
- Neville, Dan.
- Noonan, Michael.
- Ó Ríordáin, Aodhán.
- O'Donnell, Kieran.
- O'Mahony, John.
- O'Reilly, Joe.
- O'Sullivan, Jan.
- Perry, John.
- Phelan, Ann.
- Phelan, John Paul.
- Ring, Michael.
- Shatter, Alan.
- Stagg, Emmet.
- Spring, Arthur.
- Tuffy, Joanna.
- Varadkar, Leo.
- Walsh, Brian.
- White, Alex.
Níl
- Adams, Gerry.
- Boyd Barrett, Richard.
- Broughan, Thomas P.
- Calleary, Dara.
- Colreavy, Michael.
- Coppinger, Ruth.
- Cowen, Barry.
- Crowe, Seán.
- Doherty, Pearse.
- Donnelly, Stephen S.
- Ellis, Dessie.
- Ferris, Martin.
- Fleming, Sean.
- Grealish, Noel.
- Healy, Seamus.
- Healy-Rae, Michael.
- Higgins, Joe.
- Kelleher, Billy.
- Kitt, Michael P.
- Lowry, Michael.
- McConalogue, Charlie.
- McGrath, Finian.
- McGrath, Mattie.
- McGrath, Michael.
- McGuinness, John.
- McLellan, Sandra.
- Martin, Micheál.
- Murphy, Catherine.
- Naughten, Denis.
- Ó Caoláin, Caoimhghín.
- Ó Cuív, Éamon.
- Ó Snodaigh, Aengus.
- Ross, Shane.
- Shortall, Róisín.
- Smith, Brendan.
- Stanley, Brian.
- Tóibín, Peadar.
- Troy, Robert.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Joe Carey and Emmet Stagg; Níl, Deputies Dessie Ellis and Barry Cowen.
Question declared carried.
Amendment declared lost.
Debate adjourned.