Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 19 January 2023

Public Accounts Committee

Financial Statements 2020: Housing Agency
Financial Statements 2021: Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority
Chapter 7: Housing Agency Revolving Acquisition Fund
Section 2 Report – Unauthorised Release of Funds from the Central Fund of the Exchequer

9:30 am

Mr. Bob Jordan:

I think it does because they are the statutory authorities at the end of the day and they know their local social housing waiting lists. To be fair, they also know the areas where, perhaps, they cannot make allocations or where they do not need housing, so they need to be front and centre. Part of this was to do with the nature of the revolving funds. As I said, we did close to 600 direct acquisitions on behalf of local authorities. It is important to say that a lot of those acquisitions were focused on securing one-bedroom properties and larger properties for people who were homeless or coming out of homelessness to support the Housing First programme, about 300 units in total. To be honest, I do not think the Housing First targets under the Housing First implementation plan would have been achieved without the Housing Agency and the local authorities working very strongly together. I am sure the Deputy knows that one-bedroom properties are like hen's teeth, and we were in a position to go out and secure them. There was therefore a benefit-----

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