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

I will follow on from what Deputy Ó Broin said with a point I made to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, today about Rebuilding Ireland. It is borne out in the DCC table, which was helpful with targets and completions under the various headings for social housing both for the past three years and the years projected ahead.

The vast bulk of what we hope to deliver in social housing in Dublin is HAPs. The Government keeps saying we will wean ourselves off HAPs, but the councils' targets would suggest we are not weaning ourselves off but rather ramping up HAPs. That is current expenditure out from the council rather than capital expenditure upfront with rental revenue coming in over time. Does it bother the councils that their current expenditure, according to these targets, on money going out to the private sector in the form of HAPs and RAS, will rise even if the targets are met? It will cost the councils more, and they are vulnerable to whatever the private sector decides to charge them, particularly in terms of HAPs. One can argue that there might be a leasing arrangement over a longer time, but on HAPs and RAS the councils are prey to the markets. What do the witnesses think about that? Should we not move in the opposite direction? While HAPs might be a temporary necessity, over time we should wean ourselves off HAPs and see the direct provision of council housing increase and HAPs reduce. If we do not, apart from anything else it will cost us a lot. I ask that based on the DCC figures but it is a question for anybody.

When I look at the targets for HAPs, I wonder if the councils believe they can materialise. In Dublin city for 2017, the targets are 1,579 for homeless HAPs and 1,000 for general HAPs, while for 2018, the target for general HAPs is to go up to 4,000, with 1,000 for homeless HAPs. It is thereafter to be consistently 3,000 for general, and 1,000 for homeless. They almost seem like notional figures we are pulling out of our head to meet certain targets. Can we deliver on them? I do not want us to deliver because we should wean ourselves off HAPs, while ramping up the council housing construction. Even if we set that debate aside, is it realistic to imagine we will get them when the experience we are all getting is that it is hard for people to find HAPs with the current rent situation? Even the HAPs that are secured are not secure because HAP tenants are being evicted. There are probably more than are being evicted, but the tenancies are not secure. I would like to hear the witnesses' concerns about that.

I note the voids restored by DCC are quite a high figure as well, while a high figure was rejected for voids.

There has been much debate about this so could we clarify that those voids are also turnovers, if the witnesses know what I mean? They are not just houses that have been sitting there forever and there are 800 projected every year. If that is true, it implies there are 5,000 or 6,000 empty council units in Dublin City Council. That is obviously not the case. Is it not misleading to say these are voids restored by Dublin City Council? They are not voids and there is a difference between a real void, which sits there without justification for long periods, and of which there are definitely some, and properties that are turnovers because someone dies or a tenancy ends and the properties must be refurbished and so on? Is it not also fair to say that in those cases, the figures are even more misleading as sometimes voids may result from the fact we de-tenanted certain blocks to knock them down and replace them with fewer units than were in the original development? Is the category not just very misleading? There is a suggestion these are additional units that we can clock up as part of our targets for delivering on social housing.

I am pulling my hair out trying to figure out why certain sites do not move. There is a ping-pong game going on between the Minister and the local authorities about whose fault it is that certain sites do not move. My pet theory is there is a battle ongoing over the economics of the development of these sites. The councils are being told that they if they want to develop a site for public and affordable housing, they must tell the Department how the project will wash its face, economically speaking. That leads to pressure either to sell a bit of the land to finance the public and social bit of the site or to have some involvement from the private sector. That delays things and tied to this is the debate about what is affordability and how that level is set. Is this part of the delay in getting these sites moving? It is very frustrating trying to figure it out. The elected representatives of local authorities are saying they want the site developed and public and affordable housing but nothing happens, with both the Department and the local authority giving different explanations for this.