Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief. I thank Ms Timmons for her answers. If we are to ensure that people with disabilities are getting their fair share of allocations, some of those questions are the key ways to monitor that. For example, no one knows the overall percentage of properties in the social housing construction pipeline that are designed for people with disabilities. Each individual local authority has that information, although it does not necessarily publish it. That information would be a key metric in the report, though. We would then be able to say that, for example, approximately 7% of households on the social housing waiting list had one of the four categories of disability. We could track the figure year on year. Dublin City Council provided us with good data showing that it was exceeding that level significantly. Other local authorities might have data showing otherwise. If we knew the information centrally, it would be useful.

The percentage of allocations is key for tracking. I am not asking for data for the sake of it. If we do not know or no one publishes what percentage of allocations last year went to people with one of the four categories of disability, we do not know whether they are getting their fair share. That information would be useful for future housing needs assessment reports and Housing Agency disability reports.

I welcome Ms Timmons's positive response regarding wheelchair users. She is right. I submitted a freedom of information request to every local authority on this matter recently. About half of them do not even record these data. They do not know. It is not even as if the data are there but uncollated. Their collection would be positive.

A four-to-six-week waiting time is positive. I encounter many cases where applicants have been waiting six months before a decision is made and a further two to three years before funding becomes available. This suggests a wide disparity in practice. I welcome that the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government will examine this issue.

When the committee questioned the groups that appeared before us last week, two issues jumped out at me. We must recognise that, if there is a 7% level of need in overall social housing, we must deliver and track it. People with disabilities live in these houses. They do not just visit them. This point was made to us forcefully last week. In private and social housing construction, we need Part M to operate in such a way that recognises that people are not just visiting those houses, but are living there.

From the discussion last week, there is a real urgency to move beyond Part M being applicable to visiting. Is there a timeline for when those new guidelines will be in place? Houses are not being built fast enough for many of us but they are being built at level at which they have not been built for some time. If we do not amend Part M quickly enough, none of these houses will be suitable for people to live in in an appropriate way.