Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Yes, the income thresholds. To date, NOAC probably has not been gathering those figures. That would be an interesting thing to look at. It is now becoming apparent that people, even if they are over those social housing income thresholds, still have serious difficulties. That is why we have cost rental and affordable housing. Many of those people are now not eligible for things such as the housing assistance payment, HAP, and social housing. Trying to quantify that would be useful.

I have two last points. What is being done with zoned land available for residential housing that is owned by local authorities? That would be useful. There is a big issue in our area where there is land in the possession of the local authority, zoned for residential development and earmarked for local authority housing but even the servicing of the land is not being done. Is there progress being made on the servicing of land that could be used to deliver housing?

An issue that is emerging as well is the length of waiting time for medical and welfare assessments. This is not a criticism of the staff, as I suspect it is to do with understaffing. Many people now are trying to get assessed medically or on welfare or homeless grounds. The length of time people are waiting has gone from a few weeks perhaps two years ago to months and months now. There is a problem there. I do not know if the NOAC representatives came across that in their interaction with the local authorities or if it would be a useful thing to look at. Obviously, it is a big problem, especially if people are very sick, very disabled or whatever it might be, as in many cases they are. There could be children, health and welfare issues. That is a worrying thing we need to have figures on. I apologise for going on so long.