Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

To save time and money the process needs to be streamlined in terms of greater standardisation.

On the lag, while some of the sites were in areas where demand collapsed that demand how now increased. I could name a few sites but I will not waste the time of the committee. Borris-in-Ossory is one example where the situation has changed in the oast four or five years. It changed from high demand to no demand and now there is demand again, which is being met by the county council. Some of the sites are zoned for the cost-rental model. Yesterday, at our meeting I cited some examples of people in the midland counties. If a family of four has an income of over €430 they cannot get on a waiting list for local authority housing. They need an income of between €900 or €1,000 net to get any kind of a loan, including the Rebuilding Ireland home loan. These people and their children are trapped for eternity in private rented accommodation without rent control and security of tenure. A labourer with a county council cannot get on the local authority housing waiting list, which is ridiculous. One of the effects is that there are whole estates with nobody or very few people working. Even some people on social welfare cannot get a local authority house. I have encountered a situation where two people on disability benefit could not get a local authority house. There is a huge number of families with one or two people working earning relatively low wages so they cannot get on the local authority housing waiting list, cannot get the Rebuilding Ireland home loan and are trapped in the middle. I have raised this issue with the former Minister, Deputy Murphy. I am overwhelmed with the number of people who have contacted me about this matter and I have no answer for them. The witnesses, as officials in the Department, and we, as politicians, must re-engineer the system to assist people. While a lot of them would like to be able to buy an affordable home, which would be great - and we need to get that scheme back up and running - the cost-rental model would give them security of tenure and a fair rent. Can this be pushed on some of these land aggregation scheme locations in terms of some of the vacant sites?