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

I think so. To go back to Senator Boyhan's points, we need to move away from confusion about numbers to look at who we are trying to help and how we help them. The recategorisation was certainly a very important part of that work. I did not get to clarify earlier the work the CSO will do. It is not that we are taking responsibility away from ourselves for the CSO to do the work. This was a very successful exercise when we did it with build because we can now have confidence around the build number and can speak to accurate, independent data. The CSO will help us with our counting, analysis and categorisation, that kind of work, so the responsibility will be kept with me, with this Department, as it should be.

Sam Tsemberis, whose surname I always mispronounce, from Canada is the leading expert internationally on Housing First. He was over for the launch yesterday morning. We need to be careful in rolling out Housing First in the right way. We absolutely know what works now. There is an 85% retention rate and more than 200 homes have been secured. Bob Jordan is absolutely the best person to be the national director. He has put together a fantastic plan for the country. We have 200 homes already in place, 600 more coming and about another 200 earmarked for people who may be coming out of prison and might have severe difficulties as they do so in establishing a tenancy or getting back into a normal life. It is therefore actually a larger figure than 600. The advice I have been given is that we need to roll this out carefully and slowly to ensure we do it right. One of the difficulties that has been established in other countries is that some NGOs, for all the good will in the world, have said they are doing Housing First or housing-led initiatives but have not really changed their models or approaches, which has not had the desired impact in terms of the kind of approach that sees people into a home and the services come to them. I trust Bob Jordan's plan on this and his expertise in terms of the targets we have. Initially, they are minimum targets. I was with members of Dublin Simon Community on Tuesday morning. They were talking about the new capacity they are bringing into the system and how they will ensure there are enough one-beds and two-beds for Housing First. Bob Jordan also spoke at the housing summit and reinforced the point I was making, that as one builds, one should think about studios, one-beds and two-beds for Housing First. As we build more, we can expand these targets. We just want to ensure that when we have a programme that works so well and is designed to best international practice, we roll it out in the right way.

On the construction side of things, one looks at the build figure for local authorities and housing bodies and sees 1,000 in six months and we must do 3,000 more in the second six months of the year. We must get there. Last year we saw a step up in delivery over the course of the year that saw a slow first quarter and second quarter, a jump in the third quarter and a lot of delivery in the fourth quarter. It is really the way in which the delivery programme is designed as well as funding being released. It has that kind of ramp up quarter on quarter, particularly in the final quarter of the year. This is what happened last year. I saw the numbers and have communicated to the local authorities that we must get to these targets. That is an absolute necessity.

Regarding voids, I have not seen Mr. Brendan Kenny's contribution to the committee last night. I beg the committee's pardon but I was in other meetings. When we talk about voids, we are not talking about them being new builds, but the recommendation did come from the Oireachtas that they would be counted as part of the 50,000 we would have in terms of the targets for the joint Oireachtas committee. We have done a huge amount on voids over recent years. We know that voids as a low-hanging fruit are now almost coming to an end. We gave a significant amount of additional funding to Dublin City Council, Mr. Kenny's own council, earlier this year to expedite its void programme, so it might well be the case - again, I have not seen Mr. Kenny's remarks - that because that work has now happened, the council does not believe there is much left in its own pipeline under void delivery.

Regarding Part 5s and their not matching, there are unfortunately still some sites that qualify under the previous law before it was changed, whereby they had a buy-out option. There is also a phasing issue now, whereby we are trying to expedite the delivery of Part 5s upfront first and we have been able to allow and release funding in that way. This might explain the mismatch Deputy Ó Broin sees in the two numbers. As we get into the year-on-year cycles, however, those numbers will certainly correlate.

Work on AHB reclassification is ongoing. It is being led by the Department of Finance because we are treating it as an accounting issue and not an issue that will get in the way of our build targets. I reaffirmed this to the housing bodies at the recent housing summit.

Regarding the Residential Tenancies Board and the new proposals, I reiterate the point, which I know everyone understands, that when this Bill hits the floor, we must move on it quickly. We saw the delays we had in the last term. It was so frustrating to see important legislation delayed by filibustering and people with spurious contributions to make time and again. We have a real change that we can make for many people. We must get the rent Bill enacted before the end of the year.

The RTB has raised the qualifying criteria for rent pressure zones. In Limerick there have been massive increases in rent but, because rents in Dublin continue to increase, Limerick will never hit that average, that second qualifying criteria. This comes back to Senator Murnane O'Connor's point earlier about whether we can change these things. I have heard from the RTB that the qualifying criteria, as established in legislation, are not helping cities such as Limerick that are seeing exponential rent increases. I recognise this point. However, we have a second rent Bill coming in which we want to do some more complicated things. I know people will come forward with amendments to our rent Bill, but let us not table amendments that might require further advice from the Attorney General or further legal consultation that could potentially slow down the Bill. Let us get the good things that we can get done and then let us move to the second pieces insofar as we can.

I asked an official in my Department earlier today for the presentation made when we did St. Michael's but I have not seen it yet. The Deputy has the document. I do not know whether it contained the financial modelling we did in respect of pay scales, what percentage of a person's income it would be and then whether an apartment the payments for which he or she could meet would actually be delivered. Certainly, as we worked on this proposal, looked at the number of homes that would be provided, how they would be subsidised and the level of finance, it was to ensure that affordable meant affordable. A piece of modelling was done, so perhaps Mr. Kenny was talking about that. There is a discount of between 15% to 25% on the market price which one needs to achieve, balanced against what that means for a single earner or a couple and the qualifying criteria and then this maximum of 35% of their income going against their rental payments. The NDFA led on this financial modelling. I have seen it and it stacks up. We will have to remodel it once we have the final approval from the council. As it does that final approval, the number of affordable homes will achieve that level based on those two criteria. That is what we are trying to achieve.