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Select Committee on Finance and General Affairs debate -
Tuesday, 25 Mar 1997

SECTION 11.

I move amendment No. 12:

In page 7, line 28, to delete "of this Act".

Amendment agreed to.
Section 11, as amended, agreed to.
Section 12 agreed to.
NEW SECTION.

Amendments Nos. 23 and 27 are related to amendment No. 13 and may be discussed together. Is that agreed? Agreed.

I move amendment No. 13:

In page 7, before section 13, to insert the following new section:

13.—(1) Sections 3 to 12 shall apply in relation to a house provided by an approved body in the same manner as those sections apply in relation to a house provided by a housing authority under the Housing Acts, 1966 to 1997, and, for this purpose, references to housing authority in the said sections and in the definitions of ‘antisocial behaviour', ‘estates management' and ‘tenant' in section 1(1) shall be construed as including a reference to an approved body.

(2) In this section ‘approved body' means a body approved of for the purposes of section 6 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1992.".

The purpose of amendment No. 13 is to provide that the excluding order procedures in sections 3 to 12 will apply to housing provided by voluntary bodies. A new section 13 is being inserted to provide that the provisions of sections 3 to 12 relating to excluding orders together with relevant definitions will apply to houses provided by voluntary housing bodies in the same way as they apply to houses provided by housing authorities.

The Irish Council for Social Housing, the representative body for the voluntary housing movement, has welcomed the Bill generally and particularly the inclusion of voluntary bodies in the information exchange provisions in section 16. It has, however, strongly indicated that it would like to see other measures, including the excluding order provisions extended to housing provided by approved voluntary housing organisations. I have given careful consideration to the case made by the council and am satisfied that extension of the excluding order procedure to voluntary housing is warranted. There are close parallels and links between voluntary and local authority housing. Voluntary housing is mainly State funded. Local authorities have nomination rights in respect of voluntary housing. Voluntary bodies are approved by the Minister under section 6 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1992.

Voluntary housing is an integral part of our social housing system and as voluntary housing bodies have on occasion experienced difficulties with anti-social behaviour in their dwellings it is appropriate that all social housing providers should have access to broadly similar remedies. Amendment No. 23 follows from amendment No. 13. It amends section 15 to include an appropriate reference to voluntary bodies so that the discretion being given to health boards to refuse or withdraw supplementary welfare allowance, rent or mortgage supplement will apply in the case of persons evicted from voluntary housing as a result of anti-social behavour. It would be anomalous if the discretion to withdraw supplementary welfare allowance assistance did not apply to persons evicted from voluntary housing because of anti-social behaviour.

Section 15 is designed to remedy the situation whereby drug dealers evicted by a local authority had to be rehoused, with the help of supplementary welfare allowance rental assistance, in adjoining private accommodation from which they continued their activities. The same consideration applies to voluntary housing organisations.

The purpose of amendment No. 27 is to extend the provisions of section 18 to rented dwellings in general. Section 18 is designed to close a possible loophole whereby payments by illegal occupiers or former tenants might be used as a basis for creating tenancy rights. The position of voluntary housing organisations and private landlords is not different from that of local authorities. The operation of this provision is not contingent on action by statutory authorities. The extension of this provision should be of assistance to voluntary bodies and private landlords who have difficulties with payments by occupiers of their property, for example, during the course of repossession proceedings which, when properly and legally undertaken, can be lengthy.

Amendment agreed to.
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