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

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I have a number of comments and questions. I am a huge fan of choice-based letting, having been on South Dublin County Council for a number of years. Not only is it a much more efficient system in terms of turnaround properties but it also gives the applicant some control over the properties they express an interest in. We should not discount that. There are a number of issues, however. Threshold raised the issue of people who do not have access to computers or who are not computer literate. It is important that local authorities that offer choice-based letting provide a walk-in service for people who, on the days when choice-based letting is open, can go into the local authority and have their expressions of interest done by a staff member.

In large urban areas where there might be a housing estate that for whatever reason has a particular reputation, tenants who are in more secure rental accommodation will not express an interest in that area. Tenants who are in more insecure accommodation and have more complex needs will express an interest and, by accident or default, there might end up being an over-concentration of families with specific sets of needs in certain geographical areas. There is a need for that to be acknowledged and for flexibility in the allocation scheme to prevent that concentration. Some local authorities do that but others do not.

Rebuilding Ireland contained a commitment to a roll-out of choice-based letting across all local authorities. I would like an update from the Department and the CCMA on where that is at. As long as those caveats are dealt with, choice-based letting should be the primary mechanism for allocating 70% or more of properties that are not on the priority lists.

There is an urgent need to review the income thresholds. The economy is picking up and people are getting back into work but we have two other difficulties. As a result of the housing crisis, multiple generations of the one family, through no fault or desire of their own, are being forced to live together in private rental accommodation. People are being removed from the housing waiting list because they have their adult children living with them, even though their adult children do not want to live with them but they cannot secure rental accommodation elsewhere. Their income is pushing them over the threshold and, because the review is annual, more of them are being excluded. Where people are involuntarily sharing, there should be a different way of calculating the portion of the adult children's income that is taken into account, for example, a disregard of 50%. I have said before in the Dáil that FIS should not be included in the calculations of the income thresholds for eligibility. The fact that a family is on FIS is the State saying its income is not adequate. I had two cases in the past 12 months of families being less than €1,000 over the threshold on an annual basis because of FIS and they were removed from the list. They then had this terrible Hobson's choice between not applying for FIS the following year, thus reducing the family's income and losing their position on a local authority waiting list. In both cases, they were nine or ten years on the list. In addition, an increasing number of local authorities are refusing the inclusion of adult children on the list. An example is a woman who lost her job, went back to education, could not afford her private rental accommodation and, therefore, decided to move in with her parents. She is in her mid-30s and when she applied to go on the housing waiting list she was told she did not have a housing need because she was able to live with her mam and dad. It is bizarre stuff that makes no sense whatsoever and it needs to be looked at.

With regard to lettings, residency needs to be reconsidered particularly in respect of women fleeing domestic violence. Greater flexibility is needed in order that, for example, somebody is able to move from the local authority in which they have habitual residency to a neighbouring local authority to access accommodation, particularly in smaller local authority areas where there are very real safety issues. Some local authorities apply that flexibly and others do not. It needs to be standardised. A similar point could be made regarding Travellers.

I will not get into an argument about how good or bad the HAP and RAS schemes are but the simplest way to deal with the HAP transfer list is to give those on it access to choice-based letting. That tackles the transparency argument because they now know the issue is length of time on list through choice-based letting. Some local authorities have started to do that and, therefore, they are not counted in the global housing list figures. They are on a HAP transfer list but they have access to choice-based letting on exactly the same terms as they had previously. I keep saying this and Ms Hurley is blue in the face listening to me say it but the Department should just decide that is the way it should be done and issue the circular.

I have a big concern about the annual reviews. The idea is good in principle but it is a significant administrative burden on local authorities. The way the triennial reviews used to be conduct in the large local authorities was complex. People would be written to, sometimes on multiple occasions. Some local authorities would follow that up with a text message, particularly to try to access vulnerable, hard-to-reach households. Additional effort would be made to try to reach people with literacy issues. When we move to the annual review, local authorities will not have the capacity to conduct that big exercise through no fault of their own. I am worried we could end up losing some of our most vulnerable housing applicants because the local authority does not have the capacity to conduct the same extensive review it would have done previously.

I refer to home repossessions. The difficulty for families that are having their homes repossessed is they know there will be a date when they lose the property. In some cases, the local authority does not know what the income the family member will be left with after the house sale if it is in positive equity. There is a bizarre scenario where they cannot apply to go on the social housing waiting list until the repossession is complete even though that process takes approximately year. As Threshold said, they then have to wait six or eight weeks before it is processed. Only then can they start applying for HAP. There has to be a way of saying there can be an in-principle processing in advance of the repossession date. That can then be finalised once the income benefit to the family is known. The family can, therefore, get onto the list immediately for the purpose of securing HAP accommodation. It is a simple measure the Department could implement.

The figures the CCMA has given are interesting. I would have loved to see them go beyond the seven years. I have the figures from my own local authority. Perhaps the CCMA could provide figures at a later stage from across the State for the years 2007 to 2009, 2009 to 2011, 2011 to 2013 and 2014 onwards. If the CCMA follows the scheme it has up to 2014 onwards, it would be good.

I know Ms Hurley's job is to present these figures as positively as possible and she is exceptionally good at it. There are 85,799 households on the waiting list but there are also 36,444 active HAP tenancies. The vast majority of those people who want council housing are in short-term insecure tenancies. There are still approximately 20,000 households in RAS. As Ms Marguerite Ryan will be aware, because I have been pestering her about it recently, RAS is under pressure. There is a gross housing need of 142,244 on the basis of the figures. I do not mind separating them out because that is valuable but we need to understand if the 36,000 HAP tenancies were all put on choice-based letting, they would bid for properties. Large numbers of them would not be willing to forgo the possibility of a long-term secure tenancy for a perpetual cycle of two years. I understand why the Department presents the figures this way but, in total, 142,000 households need long-term secure social housing.