Mr. John McCarthy:

The Senator also raised the issue of our approval process. He will know from previous experience that there is much said about that and a lot of bouncing of the ball around between the local authority and the Department. All of us in the Department are fully alive to the reality of the very difficult housing situation we face and we are making every effort possible to move things forward more quickly, and we will continue to do that. However, we have to remember that in many cases we are talking about very large amounts of public funds for which, as Accounting Officer, I am ultimately accountable. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has frameworks in place with which we have to comply. Previously, there would have been a process that, technically, might have required eight or nine stages. That has been sweated down to four stages.

With regard to smaller-scale projects up to €2 million or 15 units, a one stage approval process has been introduced. It has not got a huge take-up from local authorities. In Rebuilding Ireland - Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, we committed to reviewing the four stage approval process to see if there was anything further we could do in terms of making it operate more smoothly. That report is almost finished. The report will deal with a number of issues including clarity on what is required. It is an issue that what is required to move a project on is not fully understood in some cases, and that can be a cause of delay.

Are there standard approaches that can be taken? For example, standard approaches to internal layouts in housing can form layout templates that can be used as a straightforward part of projects.

With regard to turnaround timeframes between the four stages, I would like us to be in a situation where we can agree with local authorities on target timeframes but, inevitably, that requires a clear understanding of what is required because if we do not get what is required, we will not be in a position to be able to deliver on those timeframes. We will also look to see whether there is scope to streamline the first two stages of the process and move things on.

There are a large number of projects within the four stage approval process and we will be finalising an update on those for publication with the Q1 report, many of which have completed all four stages and are either on site or at tender. A significant number of other projects are in the pre-tender stage.

Projects are moving through the pipeline but we are committed to exploring every possible way to ensure that between ourselves and the local authorities, the system works as efficiently as possible. To help that, a more focused, multi-diciplinary team from the Department will engage with each individual local authority to talk about projects even before they become projects, if that does not sound stupid, to ensure there is a good understanding of where the local authority is coming from and what will be the likely issues in order to expedite delivery.

Deputy Casey raised the Airbnb issue. We addressed that in the rental strategy published before Christmas. There were two elements to that, one of which was the immediate implications of the An Bord Pleanála ruling. That was on a specific case where, in effect, an apartment was being used exclusively for Airbnb purposes. The An Bord Pleanála ruling was that that use requires planning permission. We issued guidance to all local authorities before Christmas bringing that ruling to their attention. In the event that there are other properties operating in a similar manner, they require planning permission and need to be followed up.

On the Airbnb issue more generally, while a significant number of Airbnb properties may be advertised in any location at a particular time, what is not as clear is the extent to which some of those are being offered by people who are making their property available for a week or two when they are on holidays themselves. There is a big gulf between the numbers of units available in Airbnb and the numbers of units available for housing generally because they are and continue to be people's primary residences. We have recognised in the rental strategy that there are a range of issues flowing from the An Bord Pleanála case and Airbnb generally, including issues to do with tenancy regulation, tax liability and the tourism dimension. There is a commitment in the rental strategy to establish a working group to prepare a report on that by the second quarter of this year. We will be moving forward with that very shortly.

I could not agree more with the Deputy's point about rapid build. Rapid build housing has been brought forward because of its capacity to deliver projects faster in order to be able to assist in dealing with the immediate issues of homelessness but, fundamentally, we are talking about new and different types of building technologies. There is considerable scope for those technologies to be able to deliver us a good quality product in faster timelines at competitive prices. The engagement we are having with local authorities is with a view to building up the portfolio to deliver us the 1,500 units we have referred to in the programme but if a local authority wants to take forward any social housing project employing any one of these new technologies, we will certainly look at it.

Obviously, there are building standards that these new technologies have to meet. We are not in the business of delivering a less than proper product. However, as a principle, I agree fully with the Deputy.

On the issues Senator Jennifer Murnane O'Connor raised, there are always staffing issues in every organisation. We have staffing issues and have to prioritise and use our staffing resources in the best possible way. As part of the process of assisting local authorities, we have provided for certain staff costs associated with our capital programmes to be covered in order that they do not have to find the resources to meet them. Fundamentally, there is a requirement on every organisation to prioritise, our own included, and we have had to do this in delivering Rebuilding Ireland, the rental strategy and getting on with the important business of implementation. We have to prioritise and try to use our resources in different ways.

On income limits, different bands are set for different areas and there is an entire process behind it. The ultimate impact of the income bands is that they operate to target the most vulnerable. There can be much debate on whether it should be at this, that or the other level, but at whatever level they are set, by targeting the households with an income below them, by definition the most vulnerable households are being targeted.

We have rolled out the HAP scheme to all local authorities, bar those in Fingal, Dún Laoghaire and Dublin city, where it will be rolled out on 1 March. The scheme has been working for the purpose of dealing with homelessness in Dublin generally. We had a target of 12,000 tenancies last year which was achieved. The feedback from local authorities is generally quite positive, as the Senator acknowledged. We do receive feedback from local authorities that there are some tenants who believe the scheme is not the solution for them and it is for an individual household to form its own view. However, we are working towards ensuring the scheme delivers quality accommodation. All such accommodation, if it has not been inspected within the previous 12 months, has to be inspected within eight months and the issue of the standard of private rental accommodation is the focus of particular attention in the rental strategy. There are issues with some landlords in understanding the HAP scheme, but, overall, it has reached the take-up by landlords and tenants envisaged in the targets set for last year. As part of the further roll-out of the scheme to the remaining Dublin local authorities, we will be engaging with at least some local authorities on a further promotional campaign for both tenants and landlords to ensure there is the level of understanding needed.

I will be brief on the help to buy scheme because it is not in our space but in that of the Department of Finance. The Senator made an interesting point about the fact that while there was help to buy, there was very little house building in her area. The rationale for the help to buy scheme is that it has been introduced in response to a suggestion that there is a lack of confidence in the home building sector about the extent to which there is a mortgage-ready pool of purchasers available, if I can put it that way, and that this been holding back supply. One can look at it as a case of the chicken and the egg, but, certainly, the help to buy scheme has been advanced on the basis that it will have a positive impact on supply. I take the Senator's point that there may be a timelag, but it has been designed to be a supply enhancing mechanism.

The level of activity on local authority mortgages has been low in recent times. Again, going back to the Senator's point, perhaps that is not surprising if there is a lack of supply, which, of course, there is. That is the fundamental underlying problem with which we are trying to deal in Rebuilding Ireland. Nonetheless, the local authority mortgage system has to be operated in a very careful and prudent way. We do not want local authorities to get into the space of what might previously have been called sub-prime lending, giving rise to mortgage arrears issues down the road. For somebody to be able to avail of a local authority mortgage, there is a requirement that he or she be able to show he or she has been refused a mortgage by two other financial institutions. After that, there is a credit policy in place which has to be satisfied. When one looks at the profile of the local authority mortgage book versus the private mortgage book, the incidence of arrears in the local authority mortgage book is significantly higher than it is for private institutions. Therefore, potentially there is a lesson to be learned about whether the rules and criteria in advancing mortgages were what they should have been in the past. There has certainly been a new credit policy in place for the past few years and it will have to continue to apply.