Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 24:

In page 20, between lines 5 and 6, to insert the following:

“33. Section 96 (inserted by section 3 of the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2002) of the Act of 2000 is deleted.”.

There has been a lot of talk about the housing programme and people understand when units are being delivered. They understand there is a permanency about those units being delivered, but they are not going to be long-leased. Some elements of the housing programme are about long-leasing existing properties in the private rental sector. The concern relates to some of the Part V requirement being satisfied by a long-leasing arrangement, as opposed to permanent ownership of the housing by the local authorities. At the moment local authorities are out looking to purchase homes for people. The problem is that we could end up doing exactly the same thing in 20 years time to replace houses that have been occupied by people under this scheme. That is a serious concern.

The Minister of State mentioned the housing associations. I know of some very good examples and some very poor examples of housing associations, but the bigger housing associations tend to be the better ones. When we had Dr. Michelle Norris in here talking to us about that, she said there was money available from the European Investment Bank for housing associations, but there was one proviso that she and others made, namely, that they are set up as charities and are precluded by law from undertaking a project that would ensure they ended up with a loss. They require some level of co-responsibility in terms of leveraging that fund from the investment bank. We cannot criticise or blame them if we do not give them the wherewithal to do that, and I have not seen any legislation to change that scenario since they were in here. We were told there was no shortage of money to be leveraged from the European Investment Bank, within reason, for that purpose. It is important that the Minister of State respond to that and say that is out there and they could do something. They can only do something if they are given the ability to do it by a change in the Government's approach to co-responsibility.

Deputies Wallace and Boyd Barrett have put forward some of these amendments in my name.