Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The big issue is leasing. It completely stands the original intention on its head. I agree with Deputy Wallace that the previous Part V was not everything it could have been. It was not wild and wonderful. There were flaws in the system. However, the leasing arrangement will cause many problems, including in estate management. If the number of rented houses in a development is too high, in particular if they are leased privately, then the chemistry is different than if one is renting from a local authority in the sense that the local authority owns the house, which leads to a sense of permanency. People see it as their house.

Last week I spoke about the fact that I live in an estate that has Part V housing, both affordable and social housing, mixed in with private housing. People on one side of me are council tenants and people on the other side own their house. There is no difference. It is all the one, in the sense that everyone looks after the house in the very same way. The housing mix can work when it is done right and social and affordable houses are dispersed properly. The problem with leasing is that one will get a glut of apartments or low-grade housing in one corner. When prices begin to rise again unscrupulous developers will shove social housing into one corner. Some day when the Minister of State is in Portlaoise I will show him some bad examples of where that has happened already. It will be possible to develop a low standard of apartment or houses of the minimum size and to lease them to local authorities that do not have any other way of getting housing and they will put people into them. That will create another ghetto situation.

In the long term the approach will provide very poor value. I accept that a balancing act is required and that all the housing that is required cannot be pulled out of the air tomorrow morning. Leasing for a long period will ensue and tenants will pay the differential rent. I understand there will be a gap in that regard. When a house is owned by a local authority the rent goes directly into its coffers. That adds up very well on the balance sheet in the local authorities with which I am familiar in terms of what comes in in rent and what is spent on maintenance and paying off the capital. It is a good investment in the long term which works out reasonably well for local authorities. At the end of ten, 20 or 30 years if a tenant decides to buy the property then the local authority will get another pot of money following the purchase. Such an approach is better in the long term and it creates better, more stable communities. There is an inherent problem with leasing. I read in the newspapers about what the Tories are doing in England. They are paying people in local authority houses in London to move out to private rented accommodation in the shires. Their intention is to sell off local authority housing. I accept that is not what the Government is doing but it is a slippery slope. An income stream is not being created for local authorities. A noose is being put around their necks. Local authorities will pick up the bill for the situation in years to come, as well as the communities where stability is lacking.

The Minister is not going in the right direction. The previous Part V arrangement dispersed social and affordable housing in the community and provided for permanency for local authority tenants and people buying their homes under the affordable housing schemes. Such an approach consolidated the community and it worked very well.