Ms ?ine Stapleton:

The state of knowledge of the housing stock is linked somewhat to the progress we are making in a planned maintenance approach by local authorities. This will be a game-changer in our understanding. I appreciate the timelines we have set out to get the entirety of those surveys completed is four to five years. We are building on a good base of knowledge based on the shallow retrofit programme I mentioned earlier. We would now have line of sight regarding over 70,000 of those houses being at a C1 rating. The new housing stock and the current retrofit programme give us a reasonably good state of knowledge.

It gives us a reasonably good state of knowledge. However, it is correct that there are gaps in the knowledge. The surveys underpinned by this new ICT support and the support the Department is giving to the planned maintenance will help. We would hope to see local authorities accelerate those surveys. We are supporting them in that work but, realistically, given there are over 140,000 units in the stock, we will need to give them a reasonable period of time in order for that to be completed. I take on board those comments.

On the private rental sector, work is ongoing to support that objective of the Government. There is a piece of research under our joint research programme with the ESRI. We have asked it to do a piece of research to look at how that might be actioned. It is looking at issues such as what would be required in terms of investment, what kind of financial capacity would be there to support it and what the implications might be. We expect that piece of research to be completed in the second quarter and we will then engage with colleagues in the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications on a roadmap and to look at any challenges that emerge from that research. That is our broad timeline at the moment.