Ms Fiona Larthwell:

I want to take the Deputy’s question on the RTB. We are looking at the timeframe at the moment. The legislation is being developed as we speak and is being brought through, I believe, in the SIRI Bill. Forgive me, I am not in housing, and I cannot remember what that stands for. That will be brought through before the summer. On implementation, we have two dependencies. One is, as I have mentioned before, the Assisted Decision Making (Capacity) Act. We do not want to bring this measure in before that Act is fully enacted. We understand that there is a very strong push on now to get that in place and fully enacted by the summer session also. That should not be a limiting factor.

The other limiting factor is probably the impact on the HSE. The HSE’s systems, unfortunately, are simply not designed to track rental income, that is, that dynamic movement of income where typically a person has one assessment and three years later, one may have another assessment if one is still on the scheme, but that is about the totality of it. We will need to put a great deal of different systems and processes in place with the HSE with, possibly, some amendment to their financial IT systems. That, in itself, may take a bit of time but we are very committed to doing this. One of the things that has been emphasised very strongly by the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and indeed by Government, is that this is a measure that is expected to be in place and to start delivering as soon as possible. That is where our focus is.

On the RTB, the tenancy rights and the other interesting proposals the Deputy raised, in developing the scheme we considered having a preferential rate which would apply to social housing or to people in receipt of housing supports but it is not something that we were able to pursue for various complex reasons. That is why we have gone with the flat rate of 40% across the board.

From the point of view of the fair deal scheme, we are agnostic about what the source of the income is. We are working, however, to ensure that within the legislation, there will be a couple more categories other than just private landlords who are registered with the RTB, in order to ensure that we can also facilitate social housing models.