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

I thank the Deputies for their questions. I will address Deputy Boyd Barrett's questions first. The Deputy makes a point about how stopping evictions will prevent people entering emergency accommodation. However, there are two issues here. One is that landlords could leave the rental market, which would result in a loss of supply and people being evicted because there would not be enough properties. Different people would then enter emergency accommodation because new people are looking to rent every week, either because they have returned home or have reached an age where they are starting a new job. If we were to freeze evictions, we would not stop the problem of people entering emergency accommodation. We could, however, strengthen protections for people who are renting, which is what we are doing in the forthcoming legislation. We could also incentivise landlords to sell to other landlords and offer longer leases. That is an issue I am progressing.

The regulations on receivership will be introduced in legislation in the autumn. A working group is addressing that issue and will report to me shortly. Movement of housing assistance payments between local authorities is an issue we need to consider. Based on the contents of the reports, the financial figures cited by Deputy Boyd Barrett do not make sense for the taxpayer. However, we must be careful in this regard. For example, if we were to apply Dublin rates to Wicklow, would rents be pushed up for everyone? I know one family in that very difficult position. Would we then have 49 other families following behind them as a result of rent increases and pressure arising from the decision to apply Dublin rates to Wicklow? We will examine this issue but we need to be careful there are no unintended consequences from any policy change.

To correct Deputy Boyd Barrett, I never said I had only been in the job for two years. I was pointing out that HAP transfer lists and HAP in Dublin had only been in place for a certain period of time, yet a number of the figures we see on the use of the transfer list are positive. The place finder service, which operates in 17 local authorities, is working. Some local authorities have a number of place finders. The housing assistance payment also works. We have evidence that it meets people's housing needs and that it works. However, we know the transfer list can do more and we will see what we can do with that with local authorities.

Deputy Ellis referred to recategorisation. Some people are obsessing about the wrong part of the crisis we face. People in hubs are spending shorter periods in emergency accommodation but a home is better than a hub or emergency accommodation. Renting in the private rental sector is far better for a family or an individual than living in a hub, despite the many supports provided in hubs, some of which are not available in the private rental sector. That said, a home, whether a local authority house or a HAP-supported tenancy in the private sector, is a better place for the development of families and children.

We will need to maintain HAP on its current scale until more homes are built. I would not have made this policy decision but we found ourselves in a position where house building had been outsourced almost exclusively to the private sector. When activity subsequently collapsed, there was no capacity to build social housing homes. That has now changed as a result of a policy decision we made. Project Ireland 2040 provides that from now until at least 2027, local authorities and approved housing bodies will continue to deliver new homes into the stock of social housing homes every year and we will not be reliant on the private rental sector. As we do this, we must rely less on the private rental sector. We see this already in the numbers and ambitions set out in Rebuilding Ireland.

There are a number of different contingencies for which we must plan. Some are immediate, for example, the Pope's visit, while others cannot be foreseen, for example, a natural weather event or some other event in a hotel. There are other potential challenges around Brexit. For all of these reasons, we are putting in place new contingency measures. A number of contingencies are available every night which go unused in the system. We will not force people out of hotels during the Pope's visit but we must make sure there are contingencies in place to ensure accommodation is available in the event that new presentations are made. We continue the practice whereby no individual or family has to sleep outside emergency accommodation on any given night.

The European Investment Bank funds a significant amount of infrastructure in this country but it can do more. We must always be careful when we are dealing with taxpayers' money. We do not want to expose taxpayers to the types of difficulties they experienced following our exposure to the financial crisis and the difficult circumstances in which hundreds of thousands of people found themselves as a result. We must also ensure that when we use European Investment Bank funding to undertake a project, we get it right because if we get it wrong, I guarantee that this source of funding will dry up immediately and the project for which it was used may not be replicated as a result.

A number of large sites will come on stream. The policy is always to achieve mixed tenure because we believe that is the most successful way to build communities.