Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 27 September 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Rebuilding Ireland - Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness: Discussion (Resumed)

2:00 pm

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

The Senator has raised several topics because she is so well informed on this issue. I appreciate the time she gives to it and thank her for recognising the improvements.

I will work backwards through her questions. Several documents have been published this week, ahead of this scheduled meeting but also because it is the end of quarter 3, we are looking back to quarter 2 and this is the traditional time to publish the figures. I had hoped that the work on the social housing eligibility criteria would be completed in September. That was always the intention. I am not doing it. The Housing Agency is leading on that. We are almost at a point of completion. There will be much work to do in October for further publications which have gone a bit over time. I cannot give any commitments on it until it is completed by the Housing Agency and has been given to me but everyone has heard the concerns the Senator has raised several times in this committee.

More than 1,000 homeloans have been approved by the housing agency and they go back to the credit committee. We and the housing agency are turning them around very quickly but there are delays in the local authorities' credit committees. There is also an inconsistency in how the credit committees make decisions. On foot of recommendations from colleagues in my party earlier this month I am doing an assessment of the rebuilding Ireland homeloan. It is being done independent of my Department so that we can get an independent view, closer to that of a local authority to get a better understanding of what fixes can be made. I have done several round tables with the key players but we are still finding kinks in the system. This review will hopefully work them out.

I have sat in local authority chambers where members have told me that a project has been with my Department for four, six or eight months and they have not got it back and when I have asked my officials about it they say it was received only a week before. I am tired of this buck passing between local authorities and my Department back and forth. That is why I published-----

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