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

We will see what happens with the income limits and see what might be available. We talk about perverse incentives in the system all the time. We try to develop and design systems that will work to help those who need help. We do not want people to feel that they are worse off because they are working. These are the kinds of traps we try and avoid in designing policies. We are looking at the income limits issue.

As for victims of domestic violence, I had a meeting with the Homeless Network, the alliance of NGOs, last week. It was the first time a Minister has attended that meeting. It was a very constructive meeting because of all the different bodies and NGOs that were there, including those which meet the needs people have due to health care issues or domestic violence, among others. They also face the same challenges everyone else faces in terms of rent and housing. We had a very good exchange of views on certain things that need to be done, and we are taking those on board at the minute.

Prevention is key for 2018. We have brought in additional emergency beds and supports. We have the homeless housing assistance payment, HAP, and we exceeded our targets in that area last year. These things are working but we must now make a concerted effort to keep people in their homes until such time that the stock of social housing and housing generally is much greater. We will need 2018 to do that. There is a big piece of work to be done this year under Rebuilding Ireland to build on the good work that was done in 2017. Prevention is a focus of mine.

The RTB has carried out a number of focused outreach programmes using social media channels and other methods to make people aware of their rights regarding rental increases and so on and it has given us good feedback on the engagement it has had on that. There is a new provision for when a notice of termination is served by a landlord to his or her tenants. The landlord now must also notify the RTB when that happens. We are progressing that provision, in that the legislation is on the priority list for publication in the first half of this year. The change management programme we spoke about earlier is coming online as well.

By 2021 a quarter of all properties will be inspected. That means that if one has a property, it will be inspected every four years. If the property is leased out or comes under the HAP, it is inspected more quickly than that. In general, however, local authorities take a risk-based approach to this. We have asked them to refine that approach and use things like social media to identify those properties. Printouts from Facebook were brought to my attention during the course of some of the debates last year. As some of the advertisements were presented in a foreign language such as Portuguese, translators are required to try to identify properties. We are also looking at ways in which technology can help us carry out a first pass on a property voluntarily. These are some of the conversations that are happening in the background at the moment. We want to make better use of existing technology to help us expedite the number of inspections that happen. Under the forthcoming legislation, we are looking at the area of rogue landlords who really are criminals and the type of sanctions that will fall upon them where they are putting the lives of people living in their properties at risk, that is, where they are basically abusing people's human rights. That work is progressing in the Department at present.

On the LIHAF funding, the initial investment fund was €200 million. In budget 2018, I secured agreement for an additional €50 million. We have signed agreements under LIHAF 1 worth almost €200 million. There is an agreement which is about to be struck which will bring us to just below the €200 million. As we actually allocated €226 million, we over-allocated to make sure we hit the €200 million target and we are almost about to hit that target. A couple of schemes have fallen out.

I will very soon issue a call for submissions to LIHAF 2. I informed local authorities of that fact at the housing summit and told them to get projects ready. Some projects that were unsuccessful in the context of LIHAF 1 might have been close to acceptance and should be resubmitted to the Department. A few projects that for various reasons were not completed under LIHAF 1 might come under LIHAF 2 as well.