Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

A few things came up. They do not relate directly to the heads of the Bill, but to the principles that in some sense underline it. I am thinking of the case where a house may be taken and a lot of investment went into bringing it up to scratch. However, we see a lot of houses in housing estates where a monetary value is put on it, but there is a cost to the State because it is stripping that house back to what a local authority house should look like. There are currently houses that have been stripped back. They had extensions and different things built on. They must have been local authority houses that had been bought and sold back to the local authority, but have been stripped back completely. The State actually took out all of the investment that went into them. It does not make sense to me. That investment is not how much has been taken. Does that make sense? If a house is given to a person by the local authority, all of the houses have to look the same. They remove porches and extensions. They have to make it look the same as the other housing stock. There are houses where CAB is saying a certain monetary value was taken because the house was brought up to a certain standard because of the investment put in. However, at local authority level, the State is spending money to take that investment back out. It ends up costing the State. The monetary value coming out of a particular home may not be balancing when it comes to how much it costs the State to bring a house back into normal housing stock. I do not know how much that is.

I am also thinking of the case of those local authority houses - this is probably a question for the Department - and whether there should be something in legislation where if a house was originally a local authority house and was then bought or whatever, that it just be returned to the housing stock rather than sold on and money be made from it. When we look at the social good and how we can provide, increasing housing stock in communities where housing has been bought up in that way rather than selling them on to landlords might be a positive social clause when it comes to the community having access to that home. I do not know how many local authority houses end up like that, so the figure might not be that big. I do not know how much impact it would have.

The other issue is about safety innovation and where the money is spent when it comes in. I have an issue with the idea that we are talking in one sense about disrupting criminal activity and the proceeds of crime, but in no way does it reduce the level of crime that is happening. When I look at the conversation about how we frame what CAB can do in taking that, it is not reducing crime. It is not really a targeted approach. I have done a lot of reading on the safety innovation fund and a lot of projects get State funding every year to do the same thing. The criteria on it is two years. There are no capital funds. Communities most impacted by criminal activities have very little space and few buildings to work from. They can barely afford the rent on some of them. They are having to downsize. The criteria to access money that has come through the proceeds of crime is in some cases not ambitious in terms of what the Department is spending it on. It is being spent on things the Government should already be spending on and investing in. There are projects in certain counties. I do not know the concentration of crime in some counties, but there is some expenditure from the Criminal Assets Bureau in terms of the Exchequer and what it says is coming from the proceeds. When you look at the index, there are surely communities and families that are the most impacted whether from addiction, criminality or poverty itself. Yet the expenditure is being spent nationally like a general social good. That does not address why people get into crime in the first place and interrupting it at that level. Has the Department done an analysis? Is it an open call that says there is a fund and where the money for it came from, or is it a fund created specifically to reduce poverty, violence and the impact of crime in specific communities? This would attach the expenditure to where crime happens and is concentrated, instead of it being thinly spread across many organisations across the country. It should be targeted at reducing recidivism. Many people in the prison system want to leave criminality and cannot. I know it seems counter-intuitive to take money from people involved in crime and give it back to people involved in crime, but the goal is about how we interrupt it for good, not just in the moment of taking a certain amount. It is about interrupting it for good by addressing why people get involved in crime. It is poverty and not being able to meet one's economic needs, and that grows from there. There are people in the prison system who have so many ideas for social enterprises and different businesses they would like to run when they get out. They will never be given the opportunity, which will force them to come out and find ways to-----