Colette Kelleher (Independent) | Oireachtas source

My questions are about the standard setting function that is proposed and some other issues.

I was on the board of the Irish Council for Social Housing, ICSH, for many years, and a very large number of its membership and approved housing bodies are very small-scale housing providers. They are local providers of social housing responding very flexibly to local need, for example, to older people or people with disabilities. The boards of those bodies are largely made up of volunteers. Can we be reassured that the standards will reflect the scale of the approved housing body and be duly appropriate and proportionate to these very small-scale housing bodies, which we want to encourage, because they are extremely responsive to local need and we would want to see them flourishing as well as being compliant and so on?

Will regulation help or hinder approved housing bodies' ability to respond to the housing crisis where, according to the official figures, 10,000 people are in emergency accommodation, 3,840 of whom are children, and 72,000 households are on local authority waiting lists? I would like to hear from Mr. Lemass on the flexibility being balanced with the regulatory requirements, particularly for small bodies. Will there be fees for the regulation and, if they are going to be fees, will they be proportionate to the size of the approved housing body? Will the standards be reflective of the type of housing? There is a difference between general needs and special needs housing. What are Mr. Lemass's thoughts on how to make those distinctions?

I suppose one of the questions I find very concerning is around the protections tenants will have if the regulator refuses to register or cancels the registration of an approved housing body. Who in law will be that tenant's landlord? That is an important question and clarification is needed. Are the Minister's powers relating to the proposed regulator, as proposed in the Bill, in line with the powers of other regulators, for example, HIQA, or are they over and above what is envisaged for other regulators in the area? Will the proposed regulator have any impact on the classification, the reclassification or the re-reclassification of approved housing bodies being on balance sheet, or attempts to change this?

The proposed regulation of approved housing bodies is on top of an existing regulatory compliance regime for approved housing bodies, which is very demanding, particularly for small organisations. These other regulatory regimes include those of the Residential Tenancies Board and the Charity Regulator and local authority requirements. Today, for example, we saw a new circular in regard to the capital assistance scheme, CAS, the Housing Finance Agency, Companies House and HIQA. Will the requirements of the approved housing body be mindful of these other requirements and pressures? Will there be any functions for the regulator in streamlining all the regulatory requirements for approved housing bodies, because that is an awful lot of regulation? I am very supportive of regulation, but it needs to be proportionate and manageable, particularly in the case of small bodies, and they need to be able to continue to operate and flourish.

What is the proposed timescale for the approved housing body regulation coming on stream? Are there any things that approved housing bodies, small or large, can be doing now to get ready for regulation so that they are using the time to get their houses in order?