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

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for the opportunity to appear again before it, this time to give it an update on the progress made on the implementation of Rebuilding Ireland. I am joined this afternoon by Mr. John McCarthy, Secretary General of the Department, and assistant secretaries, Ms Mary Hurley and Mr. David Walsh. The Minister of State, Deputy Damien English, will join us shortly.

Rebuilding Ireland is many things but at its core it is a delivery plan with the single objective of delivering more for citizens. I have said many times that the housing challenges Ireland faces cannot be solved overnight but that is not to say we are not dealing with the day-to-day priorities or ignoring the significant issues. We are endeavouring in everything we do to provide ongoing support for our most vulnerable citizens in every way possible while managing long-term programmes to create a sustainable pathway to a stable and consistent housing sector. Nowhere is this more evident than in homelessness. The first six months of this year saw 2,332 adults exiting homelessness into independent tenancies. To date, 3,600 households have been assisted under homeless HAP and over 200 Housing First tenancies have been established but more needs to be done and more will be done.

It is a complex issue with many contributory factors and supply is a key factor. Increasing supply of appropriate and secure accommodation is the main objective and so too is ensuring that while we await that supply coming on stream in a sufficient quantity, we have a robust system of response in place to meet the needs of citizens who, for whatever reason, find themselves presenting as homeless at our local authority housing desks and in Parkgate Street.

This means continuing to provide shelter in the most appropriate accommodation available. We know that hotels are not that, which is why I recently wrote to the Dublin local authorities requesting that they expand their hub programmes so the short-term emergency accommodation we provide is as suited to the needs of families and individuals as possible.

The key remains supply and the accelerated delivery of social housing. A need for linkage between the strategic and operational is an essential component of a successful plan, which is why housing summits have become a central part of how my Department engages with the critical partners for delivery. In July we hosted a third summit for local authority chief executives and held very meaningful discussions on both strategic and operational issues, bringing forward a number of key actions.

In recognition of the approved housing body, AHB, sector as a major stakeholder not only in social housing delivery, but also in terms of tenancy management and services to the homeless and other vulnerable members of our communities, I invited chief executives of a number of tier 3 and tier 2 approved housing bodies to attend a dedicated AHB summit on 17 September. The theme was collaboration between AHBs and local authorities, as well as collaboration with the market and the development sector.

Working together is achieving tangible outcomes. Up to the end of the second quarter of 2018, Rebuilding Ireland has delivered more than 57,000 housing solutions across all delivery streams. By the end of this year I expect that number to have grown to approximately 70,000 and we are on course to achieve that. We committed to supporting 137,000 households into appropriate accommodation under build, acquisition and leasing programmes, as well as HAP and RAS, over the six-year period, and by the end of tier three we will have achieved more than 50% of our target. The need to continue to intensify and accelerate new build activity is to the fore of our strategic planning. The early years of Rebuilding Ireland focused on harnessing existing capacity and more immediate solutions while, in parallel, progressing local authority and AHB capacity to build more, and establishing solid project pipelines. Those pipelines are now in place and growing, as evidenced in the quarter two construction status report which has just been published. Since the end of 2016 the number of schemes and homes in the programme has doubled. Activity onsite has also increased significantly, with 1,074 homes going on site in the second quarter of this year alone, which is a 239% increase on the number of homes that went on site in the same quarter last year. There is no room for complacency, however. We have committed to exponential growth and we are striving to achieve this.

As Minister, I have also been clear that we need to address issues of housing affordability, recognising the pressures that exist for low to middle income households, particularly in Dublin and certain other of our main urban centres. Back in 2011 all affordable housing schemes were stood down, given the prevailing economic position in the country. As members know, given the collapse in house prices there was an overhang of unsold affordable homes at that time. This time around it is important that we only target affordable housing interventions in areas that require them, based on a consistent approach to economic assessment.

In terms of affordable purchase, I have commenced the relevant provisions of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009, the effect of which is to place the new scheme for affordable purchase on a statutory footing. From engagements with the local authorities in Dublin, the wider greater Dublin area, as well as Cork and Galway cities, their initial estimates suggest they have lands with the potential to deliver some 4,000 new affordable homes. My Department is continuing to work with the key local authorities and the Housing Agency to identify sites which would see the level of ambition increase to at least 10,000 new affordable homes from local authority owned land, and that analysis is progressing well.

With regard to cost rental, I am determined for it to become a major part of our rental landscape in the future. It is clear there is a gap between social housing and the rental market that needs to be filled, making a sustainable impact on housing affordability, national competitiveness and the attractiveness of our main urban centres as places to live and work. The Housing Agency, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and a number of approved housing bodies have signed the agreements on our first cost rental pilot at Enniskerry Road, and tenders issued last month. In parallel, Dublin City Council, my Department and the National Development Finance Agency undertook detailed modelling and financial appraisal on a major site at St. Michael’s Estate in Inchicore which Dublin City Council will now develop as a major cost rental project.

In order to support local authorities to get their sites ready for affordable housing, I have decided to provide additional funding for enabling infrastructure via the serviced sites fund. Given that housing-related infrastructure will now be able to avail of funding under the €2 billion urban regeneration and development fund, I am redirecting the €50 million funding for phase 2 of the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, to the serviced sites fund, thereby increasing the scale of the fund from the previously announced €25 million to €75 million. When local authority co-funding is included, an overall minimum investment of €100 million will be provided to those sites that require infrastructural investment in order for them to be brought into use as affordable housing. A total of €15 million Exchequer funding has been allocated for 2018, to which the local authority minimum contribution of €5 million will be added. This should enable the provision of infrastructure for around 500 affordable homes initially, based on a maximum level of €40,000 infrastructure investment per home.

One of the most significant actions taken since I last presented to this committee was the formal launch of the Land Development Agency, LDA. This will be a commercial State-sponsored body, acting within a clear Government policy framework, including that all public land disposals must deliver at least 40% of any housing potential on such lands in the form of social and subsidised or affordable housing. The LDA will establish a national centre of expertise for State bodies and local authorities, using experienced staff with expertise in project management finance, planning, development and procurement. For the first time, the Government will create a State body to deliver on the key principles of the Kenny report of 1973 and NESC’s latest research, targeting land management and housing delivery that is intended to underpin the delivery of 150,000 new homes over a 20-year period, or around 25% of all housing needs envisaged by Project Ireland 2040.

In terms of furthering our ambition to maximise utilisation of vacant housing stock, my Department published the National Vacant Housing Reuse Strategy 2018-2021 in July. It builds on significant work already begun in 2016 and 2017 by various stakeholders, including the Housing Agency, local authorities and approved housing bodies, in order to meet our Pillar 5 goals. The strategy sets out a number of concrete actions, including the adoption of vacant homes action plans by all local authorities and the appointment of vacant homes officers, funded by my Department, to co-ordinate local actions addressing vacancy. It also provides a clearly signposted source of information for owners of vacant homes, including the funding options that are available to assist in bringing vacant homes back into productive use.

In regard to the rental sector, as previously stated, the Government approved the drafting of a new Bill to amend the Residential Tenancies Acts. The proposed changes will further empower the Residential Tenancies Board by giving it the necessary powers and resources to protect both tenants and landlords in the residential rental sector, particularly with regard to enforcement. These changes will further strengthen the effectiveness of the rent setting and rent review laws by empowering the RTB to investigate any contravention of the law around rent limits in rent pressure zones and to take enforcement action, if necessary, including the imposition of sanctions on landlords in breach and initiate an investigation without the need for a complaint to be made. The progress of the residential tenancies Bill will influence the framework as each proposal will require a lead-in time for the RTB to put systems and resources in place for effective delivery. My Department is working closely with the RTB to identify capacity and what functions will need to be developed to implement the legislation. The proposed new powers for the RTB are a crucial first step in expanding its overall role and function as part of a multi-annual change management programme to proactively enforce tenancy law and assume more the role of a regulator within the rental sector.

My Department is working with the Office of the Attorney General in drafting this legally complex Bill and I hope to bring it to Government shortly. Following the pre-legislative scrutiny process, the committee has issued a report highlighting a number of recommendations, including the introduction of tax incentives for small-scale landlords. My Department is considering the report with a view to making any necessary amendments to the existing Bill or for consideration for inclusion in a separate planning, housing and residential tenancies (miscellaneous provisions) Bill, which my Department is also working on.

With regard to short-term lettings, I am currently considering the report of the working group and the recommendations from the Oireachtas committee's report on this issue. I intend to shortly announce the initial measures and actions that can maintain or return to use properties for long-term rental purposes in our cities and urban areas. This approach recognises that the introduction of a new regulatory system will take some time to be designed and come into effect.

As the committee will be aware, I have circulated a range of documents to it over the course of this week. I am more than happy to answer any questions in regard to those documents and, indeed, in regard to the continuing progress we are making under Rebuilding Ireland.

I want to add two further points. First, I have just come from a meeting on the homeless figures for August, given we have been trying to make sure they could be published in advance of the committee hearing today. My apologies for giving the numbers to the committee orally but those numbers will be published imminently. For August, the number of presentations was 238, which is down on July; 114 families were prevented from entering into emergency accommodation; and we had only 83 exits from emergency accommodation in that time. Much of the reason for this is that our focus and our resources were put into protecting people in existing emergency accommodation ahead of and throughout the papal visit. The total number of people in emergency accommodation in the State following this work is 9,527. People will know this is down on the number in July and, in conjunction with the publishing of these numbers, I will be making available a summary of the recategorisation survey that was conducted over the past four months. That recategorisation survey identified 741 homes that were being classified as emergency accommodation when they are not. Those numbers have been removed from the total number of people in emergency accommodation but they were removed at various points in time over the past four months, so I cannot be clear on how many have actually come out of the August number. Nonetheless, we now have a clear number in terms of the total number of people in emergency accommodation in the State, which, as of August, is 9,527. Furthermore, I have requested the CSO, and it has agreed, to become involved in the preparation and compilation of our homeless numbers to get better accuracy on this data because we continue to struggle to get accurate data, month in, month out.

Second, I have documentation for each member in regard to the number of builds that are happening in local authorities at the moment, both social builds and private builds. I thought it might be useful to give people an accurate picture of what is actually happening on the ground in their local authority as we talk about ramping up supply and what more needs to be done. That is being distributed at the moment.