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

I am not going to be talking to myself, not in front of the committee anyway. We have had 1,000 applications for the repair and leasing scheme, RLS, as of quarter 3 of this year. One hundred agreements for lease have been signed. To date, we have had 39 solely in 2018. We know the delivery in 2017 was poor, with nine. We have 100 leased and we are working through another 100 applications. The vacant housing offices are prioritising the scheme. It is a good concept but the more I look at the individual projects that come under the repair and leasing scheme, the more I realise the circumstances are unique. A person needs to own a second home that he or she is not using, it needs to be in a state of disrepair, and the person must not have the funds to bring it back into use, or not want to use the funds in that way. That person must be willing to give over the house for use as social housing and there needs to be a social housing need in the area. While we need to have it in our armoury in terms of getting vacant properties back into use, it may not be what we thought it was going to be initially. We are seeing greater progress in the system with the repair and leasing scheme. What we have seen is more take-up in terms of the buy and renew scheme instead. People engage with the RLS and then they get involved in the buy and renew scheme because that appears to be a better option. The scheme is working better and we will continue to drive it.

AHBs and reclassification was another point Deputy O'Brien raised. This came up at the EIB conference that was held in the Central Bank last week. We had a large housing body from Scotland there. It is bigger than any of our tier 3 bodies. It might be as big as our three tier 3 bodies combined. Reclassification was addressed in terms of how it affected the UK. We have had a ruling on some - not all - of the larger housing bodies, and we are working through that. One of the things I wanted to do was to have that led by the Department of Finance to make it clear to the industry that this is an accounting issue rather than a delivery issue and it will not impact on delivery. The committee continues to do its work and to engage with EUROSTAT and the Commission. I have raised it in each of my engagements with the EIB because as we look to new lending streams from it, classification is important in terms of whether it is on-balance sheet, off-balance sheet or state aid. While the EIB is not the classification body of the EU, it has good expertise in this area. We will continue to examine the issue to ensure that we can work to it without it impacting on delivery. It will not impact on delivery. The important thing is that the lead body for housing bodies has also given a commitment that it will do what it needs to do to make sure that classification issues do not impact upon delivery from its point of view in the raising of finance and other such areas. We will progress the matter in tandem with progressing the Bill next year in terms of trying to come to a more certain outcome. Sometimes these engagements with the Commission take time and that can be in our interest in terms of what we are doing right now on the ground.