Mr.John O'Connor:

On Part V, local authorities are the planning authorities and housing authorities and they have the power. The local authority decides whether it wishes to purchase Part V acquisitions or whether it will opt for a voluntary housing body to acquire a property. The local authority has the power and makes the decision.

The local authority has complete nomination rights into housing acquired under Part V. By way of background information, in 99% of cases, in the case of any housing owned by voluntary housing bodies, the local authority has 100% nomination rights. In the case of some sheltered housing funded under the capital assistance scheme, the local authority has 75% nomination rights to those properties. Local authorities hold the principal nomination powers for housing. If members have any issues with regard to allocation nominations I ask them to come back to me because the local authorities have strong powers and should be making all the allocations or the majority of allocations to any properties that become vacant and are owned by voluntary housing bodies.

The executive of some local authorities were looking for flexibility with regard to exceptional circumstances. For example, Cork County Council was very active on acquiring units for social and affordable housing under Part V. The council wanted some flexibility so that if there was not a demand in a town for social housing but there was a demand in an neighbouring town, it would be enabled to use flexibility in order to provide housing in the location in which it was required.

If, for example, very large houses were being built on a site and it was not appropriate to build smaller houses on that site and the local authority would not acquire large houses, the local authority could require that smaller houses be built on the site. The local authority has a wide discretion.