Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 8 November 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Implementing Housing for All: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Michael Walsh:

Right at the moment, they do. We need to develop experience in certain areas, particularly in cost rental and affordable. I want to go back to the Vice Chairman’s question on that issue. We are doing some schemes ourselves, as well as doing the development. The one area where we have absolutely no experience is the sale of houses and while that can be handed out to auctioneers and so on, it is a different game. At the moment, there is even a messaging issue with regard to affordable. We are an added complexity in the equation, or that is how I would describe it, in that people have to fill out the forms with us and get the approvals, yet they have to do all of the other things involved in a normal sale. Somehow, the simplification of that process would be far better. The Vice Chairman is right that if a developer is not in it, one can argue it is a simpler process, but we also need to be careful with what I would call public perception. The involvement of the councils, given our traditional involvement with social housing, is leaving a certain wariness around that, or whatever the proper word is. We have to conquer that and the only way to conquer it is to start a pipeline whereby people can see the product, see it working and see their friends doing this, and we will then change the dynamic.

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