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

I will try to be helpful to see if we can come to common ground on this. I want to be clear that we do not intend for the regulator to be self-financing.

We are not trying to use the section as some sort of back door for the regulator to start imposing fees on housing bodies to try to cover all of their costs. There are things that the regulator might want to charge fees for, even in interim. They may not necessarily apply to AHBs but perhaps to members of the public if they want a copy of the register. Perhaps someone wants to make an appeal and there may be a need to charge a fee for that reason.

The section 11 permits the regulator, when established, to charge fees under a number of other sections. I do not want to take away the power of the regulator to charge a fee to an individual in a case where he or she might be looking for a copy of the register but, to alleviate the concerns of Deputies, I could propose the deletion of two of the sections that would give the regulator the powers to charge fees to AHBs. For example, I could delete section 35(5). Section 35 deals with the transfer period between when the regulator is established and AHBs are deemed to be registered, but they will register over a period. Section 35 is only relevant for those first three years and within it subsection (5) provides for an AHB to be charged a fee by the regulator. The Deputies are saying that we should just take that out because it will not be needed or used and it does not need to be there. Section 28(2)(e) relates to applications to the register being accompanied by an appropriate fee. Given that we have said that the AHB sector will pay fees for registration with the RTB, in the initial stages we do not want to charge any fees in this regard. I think that, again to alleviate concerns, if we remove that section then it will not be possible.

Section 11 is about warehousing, but I do not know if that is the best way to put it. It is a framework by which the other sections will be implemented, but if we take out those two sections, the Deputies' fears will be alleviated. However, the regulator can still charge fees in the normal course of business to someone looking for a copy of the register or to someone making an appeal at a later stage in the process.