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

I thank the Deputies for that line of questions. I will try to answer all of them, as I have taken a note of them. I will begin with Deputy Ó Broin's questions and deal with the questions in the order in which they were asked. If we note quarter 3, and the delivery on the build side, it appears we will have to do a lot of heavy lifting in the fourth quarter, but that is not to give the impression these houses have not started to be built yet and that we will have to go on-site in Q4 and get them built. We are discussing Q3 from the position in the middle of December where we have sight of what is coming through, the different stages of what is in the pipeline and what is happening on sites. We had a similar conversation last year. We delivered 60% of the build in the final quarter. Those homes were completed in the final quarter. That is the way the delivery was programmed. Even though similar concerns were raised at this point last year, we ended up being only 8% off our build target which, like any area in government, when one is only 8% off a target, is admirable. It is not 100% but we were not far off it. We have a similar stream coming online in the fourth quarter in terms of completions. Unless there is a severe weather event, which we do not see from the forecasts, standing in our way that would take people off-site between now and the end of the year, we will be very successful in terms of what we will be reporting in January. I see the increase in social housing stock but also what has been completed in terms of new builds as part of that increase in the social housing stock.

In terms of voids, I am not going to take that out of the report. We are not counting above the ceilings any more, which is important. People will know what was programmed in with respect to our voids programme as part of the delivery. We are not going to keep homes vacant that could be brought back into use under this funding line, but we are not going to count above the ceilings.

The rent Bill has not been published. My apologies, I thought it had been published yesterday evening. It takes a few days for the office to do the relevant legal stamps and so on but it will be published imminently.

Where the RTB decides to go with an administrative sanction and if the landlord accepts that, it is signed off by the Circuit Court. The RTB might deal with 30 cases at a meeting where what the deciding officer has determined is agreed, then the landlords agree that and the Circuit Court, in a private sitting, will consider those 30 cases and decide they are fine. Where that does not happen, the landlord has the right to go to the Circuit Court. We cannot take those rights away. They are enshrined in the Constitution. By giving the board these administrative sanction powers, we have short-circuited the potential delays there might be in terms of the RTB being able to do its work independently. The board has to be the one to do this. The matter has to go to the board. That was the legal advice from the Attorney General because the RTB is the enshrined office in terms of the decision making body.