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

I thank the Senators and Deputies for the questions. The repair and lease scheme is available in all local authorities. The criteria were reviewed, and the main changes were that it was reduced from ten years to five years at 92% of market rate because the owner is going to continue to be a landlord; and we increased the money available to those who had a number of properties so that it was not so rigid. The Senator is correct; the uptake was not as good as it should have been. In fact, it was terrible. However, we hope that this review will improve things. We have to wait and see if it actually has. In Rebuilding Ireland there are a large number of policy interventions. Some will work, and work very well, and immediately, such as the fast-track planning process. Others will not work, such as repair and lease, so they have to be re-examined and tried again.

There are vacancy teams in each local authority, and there was a deadline of the end of last year for the major local authorities to get out and do that work. At the housing summit in January we started to get feedback on what we would consider the true levels of vacancy in those areas. The accuracy of numbers, as Senator Boyhan pointed out, is a different piece of work that is ongoing at the CSO. We are trying to get a different definition of vacancy which does not include houses that are between lettings and rentals so that we are all working from similar numbers. We are looking at bands and issues around inter-authority movement. That issue was raised with me by the Taoiseach recently.

The Rebuilding Ireland home loan is very popular because it is a fixed rate mortgage for 30 years. We want to see more people offering that, not just the local authorities. I had a meeting recently with the key players because I realised that certain parts of the process were not moving as expeditiously as we wanted them to. We must realise that a mortgage is the biggest purchase a person makes in his or her life, and we have to make sure that all of the correct procedures are followed through. We also have to make sure that local authorities are not making decisions that are imprudent, in terms of putting debt on a person that they will not be able to manage.There have to be robust checks and balances, but they do not have to take forever. We are talking about a six week turnaround. The Housing Agency is dealing very quickly with the complete applications that are coming to it. Of course, the final decision is for the credit committee in the local authority.

The tenant purchase scheme is under review at the moment; the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Community and Local Government, Deputy English, is looking into that.

I thank Senator Murnane O'Connor for her comments about the increase in the grant.

Local authorities manage the lists for housing body tenancies. The housing bodies are doing a fantastic piece of work, and we want to see them doing more. It is one of the changes that has come about over the last number of years that was not there previously. It is a delivery mechanism that works just as well as local authorities; we treat them the same when we talk about build.

There is uncertainty at the moment in our country when it comes to housing. It is there for renters, the elderly and young couples. This is caused by under-supply, which is caused not just by the fact that houses were not being built but by the increasing pressures of a successful economy. There are more than 100,000 returning emigrants, and it is fantastic to see sons and daughters coming home. We have almost full employment. However, those factors put an additional pressure on our housing supply. We are not in a stable or steady state at the moment. Rebuilding Ireland is about getting us back to a steady state. Every indicator we have tells us that we are getting there more quickly than we had anticipated but we have to keep driving that. We cannot take our eye off the ball or our foot off the pedal for one second.

There is an argument to be made on the issue of policy and flexibility. One member of the committee says that we are centralising powers and decision-making in the Department and another says we are not giving enough power to local authorities, then complains that his or her local authority is doing or is not doing what the Department tells them they should be doing. If Senator Murnane O'Connor feels that her local authority is not implementing something in the way it should be she should let me know and we will get to the truth of the matter. Deputies come to me every week with issues on the Rebuilding Ireland home loan where they feel that an applicant in their area has not been treated according to the guidance that is on the website from the Housing Finance Agency, or they feel that a local authority is applying a policy from the Department in a particular way where it knows that another local authority has done it differently. They want to know how that is possible and why their own local authority cannot act in the same way. We look at each issue individually. If the local authority is wrong we can untie that knot. If we believe it is a bigger problem than that we can issue a circular to give updated guidance on what the policy is, depending on the extent of the problem. I can only work on the intelligence I receive from the members of the committee.

Deputy Barry mentioned the rent pressure zones. Guidance was issued on this by the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB. I have no problem putting it in legislation if that has to be done. It may be necessary, depending on the outcome of certain cases that are before the RTB, and we are monitoring developments very closely. Even if it is not necessary due to those decisions it might be something we decide is prudent to proceed with, but I have to see what the substance of the decisions is before I know what kind of amendment we might be looking at. Any change in the law would not apply retrospectively.

On the issue of the housing assistance payment, HAP, and people coming off the housing list, I mentioned earlier that I accept that more can be done with the transfer list. It is not being used effectively in some areas, so we want to do more. A report was issued which provides a breakdown of people exiting tenancies in HAP and the various reasons they did so. I know that Deputies Ó Broin and Boyd Barrett have seen this report, but perhaps Deputy Barry has not. For example, 2,429 of the 5,938 were tenant-led exits; 1,105 were exits into other forms of social housing; 793 were compliance exits - and there is a breakdown of what those compliance reasons might be, including non-payment of rent - and 1,612 were landlord exits. We have been trying, as part of the new quarterly reporting, to move away from publishing big documents which needed a team to constantly produce it, to more targeted and meaningful types of reporting on a quarterly basis so that people can understand what is actually happening in terms of the numbers.

In a perfect world we would not have to comment on individual cases, but the policy measures we have in place are designed to help the largest amount of people possible. They will not always be able to help everyone, and that is why we sometimes have to work on a case by case basis. It is very helpful when Deputies accompany people, particularly when it does have a meaningful impact on the person concerned. There is a vacant unit team in Dún Laoghaire which has done work on this; it reported what it believed the true level of vacancy in its local authority was at the housing summit. After this meeting I will ask it what it has done with the vacancy information it gathered and how many times it has processed or issued a compulsory purchase order, CPO, to get that vacant stock back into use.

The website www.vacanthomes.ie is being led by the Mayo County Council. It is a national project. A person travelling to work who has passed a house for the last ten years can stop and take a picture of it. The property will be geo-located, a message will go to the local authority and the vacancy team will go out and inspect it. We have pushed www.vacanthomes.ie in public with advertising, statements and different events. It exists, and it is a very good resource. I had an update on the number of units reported by the public at the last housing summit and will get a further update on that at the next housing summit.

The Department has to finish the review of the Shanganagh proposal. If it is good we will green-light it without delay. If it is not good we will look at the suggestion made about sitting down in a room to discuss why we do not have a solution to this. We are ready to go. We have the plan from the local authority; let us see if it can be progressed. I will not hesitate to give it the green light if possible, but if I cannot I will sit down and talk about what can be done with it.