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

Moving on to the officials from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, I do not want to go too much into the adaptation grants because in some senses part of the Chair's report will be about much bigger items than that. The amount of €60 million odd is nowhere close to the demand that exists. In my local authority, and we are not unique in this, one can have to wait for a year to be processed and for two to three years for the adaptations to be put in place. Those are for cases where is a clear and evident medical need for the adaptations. The process is far too cumbersome. On the eligibility criteria, the hiking of the age up to 65 is unjustifiable. I know that is a political decision, not a departmental one, but that urgently needs to be reviewed.

The occupational therapists' reports highlight a remarkable situation. For example, in the South Dublin County Council area where I live, half of the county council is in HSE area 6 and the other half is in HSE area 7. In HSE area 6, the HSE covers the cost of the occupational therapist's reports for council tenants. In HSE area 7, the HSE does not have the staff and has not had for many years. The cost used to be covered by the local authority and it is now covered by the council tenant. We have a bizarre situation where, depending on which side of the Naas Road a person lives, he or she either has to pay for it himself or herself and is never reimbursed if that person is a council tenant or the HSE provides for it. To what extent is that lack of consistency prevalent throughout the country? That is not only an academic matter. I know of cases where people with significant adaptation needs, including older people but also people looking for the disability adaptation grants, have had their application delayed for a year or more because they have not been able to scrape together the money to cover the cost of the occupational therapist's report. In all of those cases, there is a need, notwithstanding the comments of my Seanad colleague before he left, to review the scheme again and, in light of increased fiscal space in the budget for next year, to revisit some of these issues.

A pertinent point was made by some of the older persons' advocacy organisations last week about the scheme, which point I believe needs to be mentioned, namely, that a person applies for it at the point of crisis. Somebody has a crisis, urgently needs adaptations and only then gets into the system. I appreciate that is because there was limited funding, but we need to move to a position where there must be some mechanism for trying to future plan to a greater extent and ask if something else can be put in place. Rather than waiting until someone has gone for an operation and they are discharged needing significant mobility adaptions for which they have to wait a year, two years or three years, something could be put in place for that person in advance.

On the bigger ticket items, I have a concern that local authorities in their social housing construction pipeline are not paying adequate regard to the need for a supply of accommodation for older people. I do not believe the Department should set targets but it should expect the local authorities to demonstrate clearly that they have that planned not just with respect to individual projects but also their overall social housing construction pipeline. If that is happening, the officials might give us more information about that.

When I sat on a council, however, and it is a council that has a better record than some, it was never part of our discussions on the social housing programme at that stage, so that needs to be examined.

On underprovision of units for singles, to what extent in the social housing construction pipeline are local authorities being asked to come forward and demonstrate provision for singles? One third of the South Dublin County Council waiting list is for singles but there is no corresponding one third of the units in the social housing construction pipeline for singles. When I refer to singles I mean units for single persons or a couple household that does not need a second bedroom. That is crucial.

"Downsizing" is not a bad word. I have a list as long as my two arms of council tenants who are desperate to downsize. They would love a bungalow in the housing estate in which they live or nearby, which would free up a three bedroom family home for a family on the housing waiting list or in emergency accommodation, but they are just not available. I am aware that some dormer bungalows are beginning to be included in the social housing construction pipeline but it is nowhere close to what is required.

Universal design is probably one of the big issues we will examine in the report. While we can fix the other problems in terms of the stock we have, if we are not more ambitious in the requirements for both the public and private sectors in the new housing that will be developed, we will not fix the problem in the long term. In terms of the Department, will the witness tell us what type of discussions are happening about mainstreaming universal design into planning guidelines? I am acutely aware that there will be a need, not just in terms of the county development plans but also given that there will be strategic housing developments, for central Government guidelines to ensure anything that goes straight to An Bord Pleanála is captured. Has the Department started discussing the potential cost implications? One of the people who made a presentation to the committee last week said that it could add approximately 3% to the overall construction price of the house. How can we manage that in a way that it does not prevent producing the right type of guidelines?

Then there are older renters. We are seeing an increasing number of people renting at a later stage in their lives. Part of the difficulty is that people might have an income that puts them over the threshold for the housing assistance payment, for example, and social housing eligibility, but they know that in five years they will be out of work and on a small occupational pension or the State pension and eligible for social housing. People can only join the list at that point and the list could be five to seven years for older persons' accommodation. Is there any attempt to look at that?

Will Mr. O'Mahony and Mr. Tynan give their thoughts on universal design? I am aware it is a spectrum and can be a range of things, but what would they like to see the committee highlight in the report it will produce in terms of the key game-changing policies the Government could introduce with regard to universal design? What would be in it? Should it be in the county development plan or in central Government guidelines? Do they have any thoughts on cost and cost implications? I was struck by Mr. Tynan's comments on housing typologies in private developments. Perhaps he could tell us a little more about those and how he thinks we can achieve them.

We hope to produce a report that will contain many recommendations. If there are a small number of recommendations the witnesses think we could make, what would be their top two or three? I would invite the Department's officials to give their top two or three but they might not be at liberty to tell us what they would like to see change in Government policy. However, they could send it anonymously to the Chairman by email or somehow at a later stage and we will be happy to see it.