Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Okay. The allocations do not come through the local authority. They have not even come within the term of the loan. While the loan was maturing and before it was discharged, it was not the usual situation where the allocations came through the local authorities. The assessment of social housing need has to be done by the local authority. We cannot have a situation where people make it up as they go along. The local authorities have the lists of who is eligible in terms of income, housing need, family size, disabilities and the rest of it. We cannot go outside of that and break that model with houses that are built by the taxpayer. We have to get that back on track.

This is the final thing I will ask of Mr. Doyle. Will he please put it to the Minister to try to come up with a model? None of us will be here in 25 years' time but the people who are sitting here will be facing similar problems. This will be a rolling issue. We must move to an equity model. In other words, instead of the State giving a loan, grant or whatever else under the five different models, which we went through last week so I will not do so again, but which included the different housing and financing programmes for AHBs, we must put in place an equity model. If the State owned 10% of those, this could not happen. The State or the local authority has control of it. It is not about standing on anybody's windpipe or anything like that. When we build something and pay for it, we cannot just take three deep breaths and head off into the wild west. We have to try to manage this in a housing crisis. These are houses for social need. We have to try to make sure that those people who are going into them are those who are most in need and that they have a reasonable way of dealing with the landlord or AHB. One of the pieces of information I ask Mr. Doyle to take back with him is to have a discussion within the Department and also perhaps with the Minister-----