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

I thank the Senator very much for her help last week in the Seanad in getting the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill through. While we had an excellent debate and discussion on it, as all Senators are not on the committee, not all of them were aware of the amount of time we had spent on the Bill. The remarks made by the Senator were helpful in clarifying the position and we were able to meet the timelines we had put in place for ourselves.

Housing should come up as an issue as we knock on doors as representatives or during an election campaign because it is one that is affecting everyone. Some try to present it in the House as an issue that only affects those whom they claim to represent, but that is not the case. It affects everyone, either directly or a very close loved one, be it a child or an elderly relative. Therefore, we must continue to drive Rebuilding Ireland to a successful conclusion and make changes where we need to make them - if it is smart to make them - and review what we are doing all the time.

Something we are doing is reviewing the issue of social housing qualification, income thresholds, differential rents and the right to a house in which someone's parents lived. All of these issues are being looked at because we are dramatically increasing the stock of social housing from various streams. That is happening. It is important, as we increase the stock of social housing, to look at the changes we need to make to ensure the system is fair. What the Senator spoke about was fairness in the rents being paid. Some of the work on thresholds is being led by the Housing Agency; to a degree, therefore, the matter is outside my hands. The Department is, however, liaising with the local authorities on other work being done. I hope to bring together a suite of reforms to state this is what the new landscape will look like six months hence. That is being worked on. Perhaps it might be secondary to what we are trying to do on the issue of affordable housing. We are trying to get all of the pieces of the affordable programme in place, including sites and priority schemes. That is where we are at in terms of what we are looking at and some of the work I want to do later this month. In tandem with it, much work has been ongoing for quite some time and we are hoping to bring it to completion, I hope prior to the Dáil rising for the summer in order that I can have a session with the committee. If that is not the case, it will happen when we come back at the beginning of September. We are looking at the issues raised by the Senator of differential rents and income thresholds.

There are several important things to note with regard to approved housing bodies. The Senator's colleague asked about the regional workshops. They are about co-operation between the approved housing bodies and the local authorities. It is happening very well in some areas and with some approved housing bodies, but we should not see local authorities and approved housing bodies competing for a site or approved housing bodies competing with each other for a site. Neither should we see local authorities losing out on a particular site. From my experience to date, the workshops have been very strong in trying to identify opportunities for better co-operation.

We have had a voluntary regulatory code in place since 2014. There has been pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill which will provide for statutory regulation of the approved housing body sector. It will be published shortly. It will make provision for the establishment of a statutory regulator for the sector. The Housing Agency does this work in the context of voluntary regulation. It has a good chunk of the tier 3 approved housing bodies under the code, but not all of them. The work being done means that we will not be starting from a standing position. A lot has happened. We will be able to move smoothly from voluntary to statutory regulation once the Bill has been passed.