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

I am genuinely concerned by the imminent decision of EUROSTAT. I understand that EUROSTAT could make a decision by early March and the committee needs to share that concern. People have different views of approved housing bodies. That is fine, but up to 6,000 units will be delivered under Rebuilding Ireland by the sector in the next three years. The redesignation, if it happens as we expect from EUROSTAT, has the potential to disrupt or undermine the delivery of a potentially significant number of those targets. For those of us on this committee, it should be our most immediate concern.

I am also concerned because I know people only received all this information in December 2017. The impression I am getting, and this is no criticism of the sector, is that the sector is trying to work out the implications separately from the Departments of Housing, Planning and Local Government, and Finance. None of the three groups has all of the information themselves to answer those questions. The proposal to have a group that sits down and gets into the technical detail, shares the information and works out the responses is not just sensible, but absolutely urgent. I cannot stress that point enough.

I would like this joint committee to have some oversight role. I know we do not have a statutory oversight role, but as this scenario progresses we should return to it. We will have a problem if this results, for example, in the Government having to take very difficult decisions either to reduce targets because it does not have the fiscal space or to cut expenditure in order to maintain the targets to which it has already committed in some other area to fit within the fiscal space. While we need to talk about the technicalities, they are the big ticket items.

What is the Irish Council for Social Housing's assessment of the impact of redesignation on the fiscal space to which Mr. Brian O'Gorman referred? Does the ICSH have people working on the issue and can it provide information on this? What is the level of engagement of the Irish Council for Social Housing with both the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and the Department of Finance since the formal briefing with the CSO in December? I note that the opening statement of the Department of Finance referred to not having sufficient information to deal with some of these issues, although the officials had asked other State agencies for it. Has the Department of Finance asked either the Irish Council for Social Housing or the Housing Alliance for information on this and, if so, what information has it requested?

Let me sound a warning. I have a gut instinct that we need to support the approved housing bodies getting back to off-balance sheet. My only fear is that if one looks at what happened in the United Kingdom, and I know the political context and the nature of the sector is different, in order to get them back off-balance sheet, there was a fundamental change in the nature of some of those organisations. To convince EUROSTAT that they had to get off-balance sheet, they had to become more like market operators, particularly in terms of the arms length management organisations. That has created changes and I have a nervousness that I want to express at this point. If the cost of redesignation and getting the AHBs off-balance sheet in any way undermines the not-for-profit voluntary sector status, and I know those present do not want to do that, it will be a problem. We need to name it and tease it out rather than going down a road where we could end up in a place in a number of years time where no one wanted to be in the first place.