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

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. We have some wonderful housing for older people, especially in the public sector, right across the State. In deference to Senator Cummins, I was in St. John's College in Waterford, which is a wonderful Respond development recently funded by the Department. I refer as well to McAuley Place in Naas, which is also such a wonderful facility, and even to some of the slightly older schemes, such a Verschoyle Court, just off Mount Street not far from here. Deputy McAuley will be aware of it. What is wonderful about all three of these examples is that they do not consist only of housing. They also have a variety of other facilities. The public garden in Verschoyle Court is incredible, while McAuley Place is an entire community. If the Chair has not been there, he really should visit. Not unlike the Respond facility, it has a community hall and a public café and provides a host of activities in which the residents are involved. Several new apartments have been built at the back of the complex.

We know what works in this regard, certainly in the public sector. It is important when we have these conversations to emphasise this is about choice and not about putting any pressure on older people living in larger homes to move out of them. They are not the cause of, nor contributors to, our housing crisis. This is about giving older people who may wish to rightsize as many options as possible to enable them to do the right thing for themselves. The reason I say that is that sometimes when these matters are debated by other people on the radio, many politicians get calls from nervous pensioners who feel like they are being blamed because they have an emotional attachment to the homes they are living in. They might be the only people living in them, but these are their homes and they have a right to live in them. I do not think anyone at this committee would say otherwise.

My one concern, however, is that while some funding is available, it is not anywhere near enough. More important, I am not so sure if we are setting the right kinds of targets. A good local authority will take all the good policy instruments Ms Timmons has outlined and access them through the capital assistance scheme, CAS, the capital advance leasing facility, CALF, the AHBs or the strategic housing investment programme, SHIP, to deliver good quality rightsizing. The great value of doing that is that a rightsizing social housing development built in an existing local authority estate will make it possible to get more dormer bungalows on that piece of land, which in turn will free up more two-, three- and four-bedroom homes in that existing estate. That is a good model of practice.

My first question for Ms Timmons then concerns whether we are moving towards starting to set targets in local authorities whereby a certain percentage of their social housing output, based on an evidence-based need for rightsizing in existing estates, would be incorporated into their housing plans. There is also a need to go a step further because we will also need rightsizing options in the private sector. Do we need to start considering amendments to planning legislation? As part of the housing need and demand assessment, HNDA, of planning applications, should consideration be given to ensuring an appropriate proportion of rightsized properties, especially dormer bungalows and ground-floor apartments, can be delivered?

I will raise a major concern about the fair deal scheme. The age organisations, representatives of which will be before the committee later, have been particularly concerned about issues of potential elder abuse and extended family members applying pressure to family members, some of whom are vulnerable, to access the fair deal scheme to enable a property to be let out. I am not opposed to trying to incentivise getting some of these properties into the private rental sector. I think it will be a small number and not anywhere close to 8,000 properties, or even a half or a quarter of that figure. Any properties we can get into the rental sector will be a good development. How do we fully protect the owners of these properties from the kinds of concerns we have heard the Minister of State in the Department of Health, and others, express? How can we ensure that while we get the properties into the rental market, we do so in a way that fully protects the interests of the older owners of these homes?