Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of the witnesses for attending. We appreciate their time. I also thank them for the contributions they made to help the Government produce the national housing strategy for disabled people, which was agreed earlier this year. It is very important that we have a strategy. I accept the criticisms. I have heard them and they are not news to me, but it is important to have a baseline and to at least have a strategy as something to aspire to. Mr. Dolan spoke correctly about housing being a fundamental human right. Without adequate secure housing that meets a person's personal needs, it is very hard for them to go to school, college, training or work, or to take their place in society and in their community. There is no dispute about that and no dispute at this committee on that issue. We have not only aspire to championing that ambition, but making it a reality. Housing for All goes that way and is a good step in the right direction. The national housing strategy, which emphasises equal access and has an objective of promoting inclusion of disabled people in communities, is important.

The issues raised by the witnesses on wheelchair-liveable UD and the Part M regulations are part of a technical discussion but, in practical terms, it makes a huge difference and can have huge benefit for people's quality of life and living standards. I have had the opportunity to meet with the Irish Wheelchair Association and I thank its representatives for the submissions they have provided me with. As a committee, we should be putting in our report a strong recommendation to the Department supporting the amendment. It is important that the committee not only hears the request, but endorses and supports it, and that we do what we can to progress that.

On the issues regarding local authorities, I was honoured to be elected to Dublin City Council for years. It is great that, since 2021, they are starting to capture in a field the requirement for wheelchair-accessible and wheelchair-liveable accommodations. However, I do not accept the local authorities’ suggestion that they cannot capture it on historic applications. I would like to hear about this from the experience of the witnesses and their members. Anybody who is on a housing list has been on it for a couple of years, unless they joined since 2021. They will have been on it for at least five years and every two years they are required to reconfirm their need for housing. What I do not understand is whether the local authorities are saying that when they are doing that process and sending out those letters, they are not capturing that information. I would be interested to know if that is the experience of the witnesses. Again, as a committee, we need to take this up with the City and County Management Association and local authorities because there is no excuse for that information not being captured.

That will deal with social housing. It is correct that we are committed to 10,000 new-build social homes for the next ten years but we also have affordable homes and private homes. Every local authority has committed to doing a housing needs assessment for the first time, and that is meant to capture housing need of all descriptions. I could not believe it when I heard that the census was not capturing this information. It is such a massive missed opportunity, not just for housing, where it is important, but also for many other social infrastructure and social services. Again, I suggest that a recommendation the joint committee will make in its report is that future censuses capture that information.

I am almost out of time. I ask the witnesses is for them to come back on the question around the local authorities. Is this what they are saying, namely, that when they are getting people to reconfirm their need, they are not capturing that? In terms of UD, I believe we should circulate all of the very technical information on the differences between UD and wheelchair-liveable accommodation.