Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is probably the most significant amendment in the entire group. That is evident from its length.

I will pick up on where the Minister left off before we took the break around what he argued regarding the challenges, particularly with social and affordable housing eligibility. Our social housing system is very clear. In addition to general needs housing, we have a variety of other categories where quantities of social housing and, one assumes, a larger stock of cost-rental housing, when we get there, can be designated for specific groups of people. That is set out in the scheme of lettings, which makes the rationale for that. Therefore, our social housing system, in some senses, is already set up to allow certain forms of prioritisation. For example, it could be for people with disabilities or mental health needs, etc. I am interested to know whether the Minister or Department has ever sought legal advice as to whether ensuring that in geographical areas, that is, Gaeltachtaí, it is legally permissible to have a percentage of housing specifically for Irish language users who meet a certain level of competency. Is that in fact legally possible? I suspect it would be in the sense that anybody can learn the language and do so to a certain proficiency. If there has been legal advice, and obviously the Minister cannot share it, will he at least talk about it? That would be particularly interesting.

What is most interesting about that, if you look around, very often it is people who come to live in Ireland who take a significant interest in the language, and are more likely to send their children to bunscoileanna and Gaelscoileanna. It would, therefore, be very useful for us to have some initial conversation on the extent to which the Department has explored this issue and to what extent there has been advice from the Attorney General. Could the Department, through an open and democratic process of amending the scheme of lettings, carve out in those geographical areas the State has decided on by designating areas as Gaeltachtaí, where it would be absolutely appropriate for that scheme to state that in those areas, in the first instance, housing could be set aside? In the same way as the scheme of lettings combines medical priority along with the length of time on a list, it could also, for example, combine length of time on a list with language proficiency up to a certain level as designated in law.

I would be very interested to know whether there has been any attempt to look at this issue in other European jurisdictions. Obviously, we are not just operating within Irish law but within EU law, as we know from the Flemish decree and the local-only clauses that are no longer permissible in our development plans.