Dr. Aideen Hayden:

Professor Norris has covered a lot of the issues. Working backwards, one of the things that struck us was an apparent historic mistrust between the Department and the local authorities. Some of the comments made to us were about the ball being kicked backwards and forwards and one architectural team having to go back and redraw because the Department's architect wanted a window in a different location. Many of the local authorities found that sort of thing incredibly frustrating. The point was made on a number of occasions that if some of the larger local authorities have full architectural departments, accountants, audit services and so on, the process should not have to go backwards and forwards. The feeling that large local authorities are second guessed at every turn when time is, in theory, of the essence came across to us as a criticism, in particular from those large authorities. Some of the smaller local authorities felt that for them the best way to do business would be to receive an envelope of funding and be allowed to get on with it. There was a great deal of support for the idea of shared services whereby one would have a regional lead local authority which would provide services to the smaller local authorities. That could also cut out a great deal of the duplication that goes on between the local authorities and the Department.

On the point of oversight, no one suggested the State's money should not be guarded and that every penny should be spent properly. The point was made that, as it stands, there is a great deal of oversight in any event of local authorities. It is not as if they are permitted to spend willy nilly without oversight. In fact, in their opinion, a lot of the toing and froing between the Department and local authorities was unnecessary.

As to the manner in which the lack of rents based on a differential rental basis could be subvented, we are not dedicated to the HAP system, as Professor Norris has said. However, we were of the opinion that while the availability agreement scenario, which is currently there for the approved housing body sector, had short-term benefits on its establishment in 2011, it does not represent good value for the State going forward. It is not good value for the State to commit itself to paying 92% of market rents over a period of 20 years plus. Those are, in effect, only going in one particular direction. It does not go with the principle of what we are proposing, which is that rents should be based on cost and not on what the market will bear. For that reason, HAP seemed to be a reasonable compromise in terms of making up the difference between what tenants could afford and what the cost-rent would be. The important point is that it is a cost rent. It is the cost to the local authority of providing that housing.

There are other issues at which we did not look in the report, including stop transfer whereby local authority stock is transferred into an off-balance sheet mechanism that might allow local authorities to borrow. While we considered them, we did not raise these issues in the report. There is only a certain number of things one can look at in a particular report. The real point is that the system incorporates local authorities, approved housing bodies, HAP, RAS and everything else. They are layers of an onion which have been put one on top of the other. There is no transparency in the way housing is delivered at the moment and, certainly, there are features which could be addressed by changing the model.