Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the report and recommendations which are concise and easy to understand. Some of them relate to matters which it is already within the power of local authorities to do themselves, including ring-fencing income from housing rents. It is in the hands of local authority members to do that at the moment. One of the recommendations was that income from the property tax levied on council housing could be used to establish sinking funds. It is hard to understand why the councils charge themselves property tax because it is simply a contra entry. They charge themselves and they pay it out. It serves no real purpose and it is not real money in that sense because it is a contra entry in the books. It is not really there to put into anything.

The witnesses referred to suspending the tenant purchase scheme for council housing. Should it be amended or suspended completely? What is the witnesses' medium term view on the tenant purchase scheme? Should it be kept and amended or disbanded? On the long-term funding of local authority housing, I assume the witnesses are looking at the cost-rental model as the most sustainable way to provide local authority housing on a long-term basis. Regardless of how we fund this, the level of funding required to solve the housing crisis is not within fiscal space. The element missing from this is the off-balance sheet model which needs to be controlled. I hope we can find a local authority or State-owned off-balance sheet model which could deliver social housing on a cost-rental model on a long-term basis.