Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 30 March 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government

Quarterly Progress Report Strategy for Rented Sector: Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government (Resumed)

2:00 pm

Photo of Eoin Ó BroinEoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have six areas of questions. The first concerns public private partnerships. We had a long exchange on this at the end of our previous meeting. Since then, I have met the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, the Department and Dublin City Council, DCC, and have spoken to the county manager of South Dublin County Council and to the Sinn Féin councillors in the councils affected. I have even more concerns with the model than I had the previous time. In all the conversations I have had with officials since the previous meeting, the first thing they have said is that we should not have an ideological conversation about this. My conversation about this is not ideological. One of the reports I have read since our previous meeting is the very detailed report of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee on the use of public private partnerships in Britain, including in social housing. The core conclusion of its report, and this is after 15 years of experience of these matters, is that the benefits of off-balance sheet borrowing do not offset the long-term additional costs, let alone the additional risks when the projects go wrong. The Treasury Select Committee is a body that is probably more conservative than anyone in this room in its general thinking about these matters.

I am still concerned about the benchmarking process and the lack of transparency surrounding it. I am even more concerned about the potential risks that could fall back on the Exchequer, whether in respect of central or local government, as a result of the contracts, particularly if there are defaults or disputes in respect of the contracts, especially over the 25-year maintenance period. I am absolutely opposed to the inclusion of approved housing bodies in the public private partnership, PPP, companies.

Nobody has given me any rationale for why the local authorities should not only own these units at the end of the period if they go ahead but also manage them throughout.

I do not understand the absolute exclusion of elected members in the councils from pretty much any of this, other than approving section 85 developments and planning permissions, given the risks of which we know of Britain. We are in a real dilemma. On the basis of the first bundles, there are 108 units in my constituency. I do not want Sinn Féin councillors in South Dublin County Council to vote against delivery of these 108 units that will house 108 families within two years. There are, however, so many risks involved in this model that this evening I will make a written submission which has just been completed. I will not ask the delegates to respond on all of these matters because I have other questions to ask, but I want the Department to give me a formal written response to the submission which goes through all of my concerns in the areas to which I have just referred. I will ask it to consider a series of reasonable amendments to what it is proposing. I would much prefer it to use 100% upfront Exchequer funding or Housing Finance Agency loans, but I am not optimistic that the Minister would agree to that. In its absence there is a set of other matters that it needs to consider. We do not want to sit here in a couple of years when many of the things the House of Commons Treasury Committee has confirmed will have come to pass. When I asked the last time we met about HFA loans for local authorities, I said there was no plan for them to increase HFA borrowings, yet on page 45 of Rebuilding Ireland there is an explicit commitment to increase capital and HFA loan facilities for local authorities and approved housing bodies. Will local authorities be able at some stage to borrow from the HFA to build, in addition to capital funding from central government?

I would like to receive an update on the Irish League of Credit Unions, ILCU. I know that the Department is not the block but the Registry of Credit Unions, the Central Bank and the Department of Finance. Have there been subsequent conversations? Is pressure being exerted, or is there engagement with these two bodies to try to free some of the money the ILCU and others have put on the table?

I am very concerned that cost rental is one of the ideas many people say is a good one; everyone has a vague idea about it, but as no model is emerging, it will not be delivered. I take a slightly different view from Deputy Ruth Coppinger on the land initiatives or joint ventures. I am open to discussing them as long as they deliver good quality social and affordable housing and nobody is getting anything for free and that there is a clear return to the taxpayer.

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