Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for missing some of the opening statements as I was in the Chamber for Questions to the Taoiseach and hope that I do not repeat any points that have been made.

One of the main reasons I had hoped we could have this session and a subsequent is because I served as a councillor for ten years on Dublin City Council and saw a local authority provide a fantastic service for older people. Certainly during the years 2000 to 2010 the local authority built a lot of complexes in the area. Every time a complex was built one's phone would melt from the number of phone calls from people who were either in local authority homes and wanted to downsize or were in private homes and wished to avail of the new form of housing. We know that the scheme is universally popular, provides density, allows people to stay in their communities and generates a huge amount of positives. We also know that the scheme is subject to far fewer objections by existing communities. It is an easy button for local authorities to press yet in a time when we are building significantly more local authority housing I do not see a pipeline of senior homes coming through. That being said, there was a very significant one in my own community yesterday in Ballymun, which I acknowledge.

I want the Department to communicate the prioritisation of senior citizen housing to local authorities because there is a feeling that it is about family homes and maybe senior housing does not add to that picture. I believe that it does. The scheme frees up local authority homes for people who want to downsize and creates a much greater social mix, particularly in areas where there might be a high level of concentrated low-income housing. We know that whether it is mixed tenure or mixed income when one concentrates on low-income housing there can be significant resource issues. What is the Department doing to provide local authority senior citizen housing?

One of the successes of the Dublin City Council schemes was one called a financial contribution scheme. People could sell their home to the council and that did not give them priority on the list but allowed them to buy a way on to the list or become eligible for the list and then they would be housed in the normal way. Often, if one were selling one's home one could then access the scheme. Until very recently I know that nearly 140 people in my area alone wanted to avail of the financial contribution scheme. It would be a source of funding available to they local authorities but they were not in a position to do this because of the priority that I talked about earlier. Now I have heard that the Department might have this as a priority but because of a prohibition on the purchase of properties the financial contribution scheme in Dublin City Council will now end.

I ask the officials from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to clarify the following. Does the prohibition or limitation on the purchase of homes by local authorities restrict schemes such as the financial contribution scheme? What is the Department doing to encourage local authorities to provide more homes for senior citizens?