Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the report. There is a lot of interesting stuff in it, including tables, statistics and facts. Obviously, I welcome some of the recommendations the authors have made, particularly the fact they argue for the merits of social housing and the point that the AHBs do not have the capacity to deliver and that there is an excessive reliance on them. However, I have to take the authors up on a number of issues where I have a bone to pick, I am afraid. They seem to be using terms like "move away from income-related rent", and I have to say this is a significant problem for me. I do not buy the idea, although I am not even sure of the economics of paying for council houses and believe we need to look into it. A lot of this has to do with how long the cost is spread over.

If we insist that it pays for itself within 30 years, we are going to have to charge high rents. It will pay for itself over a long time. There are all sorts of issues with maintenance, the exact calculation of how much rent comes back and the changes in the demographics of those in council housing and the consequent changes in the amount of rent coming back to local authorities.

I ask the witnesses to comment on the failure to raise income thresholds, which is one of the big problems. They should be raised significantly to achieve the social mix about which the Government keeps talking. In some instances, the Government uses the social mix to justify the privatisation of public land. That is not the way to deal with the problem of council housing paying for itself, which has been mentioned by the witnesses, or to get the social mix. We should not abandon income-related rents. We should have a much broader mix of incomes in council housing. I would go further by asking why anybody who wants to live in a council house should not be able to do so. This is the case in many European countries. I ask the witnesses to comment on that.

If we say that some people are eligible for council housing because of their income and other people have to go to the private market, surely that automatically creates a stigma. Why should we not provide, in line with the requirements of differential rent, that one can pay a fair proportion of one's income towards one's rent regardless of whether one has a low, medium or high income? That would be a fair system. If anyone were allowed to apply for council housing under such a system, we would get higher revenues from council housing, which would then cover some of the maintenance issues that have been mentioned. I ask the witnesses to comment on that.

I always think context is important for framing a debate like this about the financial viability of council housing. Notwithstanding the important work the witnesses have done here, surely it is important for us to ask questions about the alternative that is being presented at the moment. I refer to the financing and economics of the social housing model that is being pursued at the moment under Rebuilding Ireland. Of the 137,000 social houses that are supposed to be delivered under Rebuilding Ireland, some 80,000 will come under the HAP scheme, some 4,000 will come under the rental accommodation scheme and some 10,000 will involve leasing. The vast majority of these social housing units will be sourced from the private sector and, therefore, will be vulnerable to whatever the private sector chooses to charge the local authority for them. While there may be problems with the economics of social housing, it is superior to the current approach in terms of the cost-to-value ratio for public money. Perhaps the witnesses will comment on that.