Dr. Ronan Lyons:

I would not call myself an expert on social housing but I think an overhaul of social housing is needed. It is not just about the money. It is about how the money is used and how the rents are paid. As I understand it, a normal social housing system works along two principles. The first is that one borrows money to build social housing and that gets paid back over a 30-year period. I think we are drifting back into that but for too long, it was capital grants-based where it was a case of "once you have it, you have it and when you don't, you don't". This is definitely not counter-cyclical, which is what one needs for social housing. The second element concerns the rent a social housing tenant pays. To put it bluntly, at the moment, they are paying such a small fraction that the cost then falls on the taxpayer who has limited appetite for that. Under a system that is much more commonly used in the rest of Europe, a fraction of a person's income up to a maximum goes on the rent and the taxpayer pays the rest. This then prevents any perverse incentives around not wanting to get a higher paying job or to get out of a certain income threshold.

Do we have a social housing strategy? There was one launched yesterday but I do not know if it is called a strategy. Is it where we need to be in ten years time? I think it is still well short of that. It is still far more a private rather than a social sector and this affects many families. We have a very limited social sector compared to other countries in Europe.