Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is a constant point of communication between us to ensure we are doing everything we can to help people in their homes and communities.

The Senator asked about taxpayers' money going towards rent in the private sector. If the private sector did not exist, this problem would be much worse. There is something of a Hobson's choice in having to do that. Being able to give flexibility to people to choose where they want to live but with State support and to be able to rent and not have to commit themselves to a 20, 30 or 40-year commitment works for some people but for many people it does not. That is why we are focusing so much on building acquisitions and long-term leases to get people into secure sustainable tenancies.

The Senator asked about vacancy and accountability. We need more transparency here. Through transparency we get accountability. That is why either next week or the week after I will publish targets and write to every local authority about what they will build next year so that the Senator, as a representative of her community, together with the councillors and everyone else can actually see what is meant to be delivered and can ask questions of the local authority as to what is happening week-in and week-out. It is only by doing that, together with everything being transparent, that we can drive the kinds of results we will need to see next year. I am quite confident that we will almost double our social housing build next year.

There was considerable debate about rent-pressure zones at the time and in the preceding years. Someone previously said they were going to bring in rent caps or freeze rents. It actually had an adverse effect on the market in that landlords moved to ratchet up rents before the freeze came in. In other countries that brought in blanket measures on rent, it froze the market and resulted in some people paying very little rent when they could afford to pay much more while others were locked out of the rental market. The two qualifying criteria for rent-pressure zones of looking back at four of the previous six quarters and the average rent across the country are sound. As we come through each quarter, new areas fall into the rent-pressure zones. Obviously there will be a spillover effect in where there is a rent-pressure zone and an area just outside it. That is one of those unintended consequences of a policy that is introduced. However, the RPZs are working and we will continue with that policy into next year.

Much of the Senator's contribution related to the affordability issue and she is right to highlight it. We need to be careful not to make too quick a comparison to a new type of homelessness. I recognise the difficulties people have in trying to pay high rents and save for a deposit. I know people who have had to move back to their parents' homes either because they cannot afford the rent or in order to allow them to save for the deposit. What they are experiencing is difficult for them and their lives. It is a far cry from what people who are forced out of accommodation are experiencing. We are being sensitive in how we talk about it.

For a long time people who qualified for social housing support got all this support from the State, but those who did not qualify felt almost abandoned. We cannot be that black and white with our policies anymore; life is complicated. Sometimes giving an individual a little bit of support can make a very big difference. Under LIHAF 1 and LIHAF 2, on 70% of the sites two and three-bedroom houses will come in below a certain threshold. However, on about 30% of the sites we will have affordable schemes whereby someone who does not qualify for social housing but who would not be able to afford a house on the market will be able to enter those homes on an affordable-to-buy or affordable-rent scenario. That is what I will be announcing in the coming weeks.

Of course, the additional €25 million we announced in the budget is also for affordability schemes. We look to something like the Ó Cualann model in terms of co-operative housing and what the qualifying criteria were for people to be placed in those homes through the local authority. We will consider something similar for those affordability schemes. I return to a point Deputy Cowen made. While Dublin City Council charged Ó Cualann only €1,000 a unit, the cost the council incurred was about €70,000 per unit when servicing costs and everything else are taken into account. There are not necessarily clean ways of calculating these things and we try to average them out.

We are reviewing the qualifying criteria in terms of thresholds for social housing supports. We are also reviewing the incremental tenant purchase scheme. Someone on HAP can transfer to another area, but only if transferring up. Senator Murnane O'Connor mentioned that landlords did not like HAP. We have experience of 23,000 or 24,000 landlords, some of them with multiple properties, working with the different agencies to help people into HAP tenancies. HAP has been successful. We have exceeded our HAP target this year. While I understand why there might be difficult cases with individual landlords, the overall experience is that it works and that people are happy to engage in a HAP tenancy.

It is superior to previous programmes because there is the flexibility to go above the amounts and add 20%. It is important that we have that option. If we can learn from what we do and constantly review and analyse what is and is not working - I hope that is the approach I am taking to this brief - together with full transparency and accountability, with everything being published and everyone aware of our targets and what we are doing, we can improve the system and make it work for the people who are at the receiving end of it. We have to make sure they are getting the support they should be getting.