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

We will spend €422 million next year on HAP. That will support those currently in HAP tenancies and fund the creation of new HAP tenancies. As I stated, we will reach a tipping point in 2020 and 2021, which is the final year of Rebuilding Ireland. By that time, the building of social housing by local authorities and housing bodies will have recovered sufficiently such that people will be primarily supported through our stock of social housing. There is a funding commitment under the national development plan to continue that to 2027, with a projected 110,000 social housing homes to be built between now and 2027.

We will publish the criteria for the serviced sites fund next week. That work is almost complete. I hope to publish it next week before the Dáil rises. The basic qualifying criterion is an income of less than €75,000 for a couple or €50,000 for an individual. The documentation provided to the committee contains a table listing the sites that have been agreed in principle and another detailing the sites we are working to get agreed in principle. We will run the serviced sites fund in a similar manner to the urban regeneration fund, involving A, B and C streams. The A stream involves sites that are ready to go, the B stream regards sites that need more work and the C stream pertains to sites that were not successful but which we want to quickly progress into the B stream. Each local authority has been asked to carry out an economic assessment of its area to determine how it will deliver affordable homes on its public land. The results of those assessments will inform our second call which will go out in the new year.

I want the Bill to provide a legislative basis for the Land Development Agency, LDA, to pass through the Houses by Easter because I want to get extra capital into the LDA as quickly as possible. If I publish the heads of the Bill next week, the committee will then need to carry out pre-legislative scrutiny. I hope to appoint a board to the agency as quickly as possible in order that it can begin to take certain steps in terms of accounts and the hiring of additional staff and so on. It is already working. It aims to begin lodging its first planning applications next year and I do not want to do anything to delay that. The agency is up and running but it is important it has a legislative basis.

On the residential tenancies (amendment) Bill, I will firstly address student accommodation. Student accommodation let under a tenancy agreement is currently covered. As Deputy Darragh O'Brien is aware from his discussions with Deputy Ó Broin, the Minister of State, Deputy Mitchell O'Connor, and me, the aim is to ensure purpose-built student accommodation under a licence or other student accommodation that might be under a licence from a public body is also captured. We are trying to compile the evidence and information and ensure the proposal in that regard is robust. The information I published yesterday, of which members are aware, will form the basis of an amendment which will be tabled on Committee Stage of the Bill. Work remains to be done in that regard but we have time to do so because, obviously, the measures will not be retrospective but, rather, will apply into the future.

On the delay to the residential tenancies (amendment) Bill, I wanted to ensure the extra powers being given to the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, are robust rather than symbolic. There was a significant amount of discussion between myself and the Office of the Attorney General to ensure the RTB would be able to have powers similar to those in a European model while recognising that we do not have a European legal system in Ireland but, rather, a common law jurisdiction. It is sometimes difficult to find that balance. Certain matters will be liable to be treated as a criminal offence or may instead be pursued by means of administrative sanction. That relates to a question asked by Deputy Ó Broin. It will be for the RTB to decide whether the breach of the rent pressure zone regulation is sufficiently serious as to warrant a criminal prosecution and possible prison sentence or ought to be dealt with using the new administrative powers of the RTB to issue a fine, warning, caution or similar. We have provided two streams which the RTB may follow. Should the RTB wish to pursue a case as a criminal offence, it will be able to do so or, alternatively, may deal with it using its administrative powers, such as imposing a fine.