Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will try to say one positive thing. I welcome the fact that there is a serious discussion about this crisis, albeit very belatedly for a crisis that has been building up for at least the past five or six years. There is a serious attempt to engage with it, but I am deeply sceptical about the capacity of this plan to deal with the scale of the problem. This is primarily because it relies overwhelmingly on the private sector to deliver public housing. I have read the Minister's plan in detail and in its graphs the biggest bar by a long mile is for HAP. The graphs make it clear that, for every single year of its projected delivery of social housing, the private sector is bigger than any other category of social housing. I do not believe that will happen. It may happen in some areas but in my area it will definitely not happen. I want to know what the Minister is going to do about areas such as Dún Laoghaire. Given the caps, even the increased ones, why on earth would a landlord who is charging €1,800 for a one-bedroom property and up to €2,500 for two or three bedrooms sign an arrangement with a local authority for much less than that? They are not doing this in any significant numbers, and when they do get involved they pull out just as quickly, as they did under the RAS scheme.

The reliance on HAP, RAS or leasing arrangements with the private sector means the quality of social housing is being degraded. When a person gets a council house there are certain standards it will have had to meet and a clear line of accountability on the part of the housing department to maintain it and make sure it does not fall below standards, but that is not true with RAS. In RAS, if there is damp or there are other problems that the landlord should remedy, the tenant is immediately in a quandary. They do not know whether to raise the issue for fear the landlord will pull out of the deal and leave them homeless. That is the reality, because the relationship is not a direct one between the local authority and the tenant any more. Many tenants suffer in silence because they are afraid to point out problems of chronic damp lest they be flung out.

I wish to ask a straight question on rapid build. The Minister said the procurement process for rolling out rapid build was not yet fully in place. Is that correct?