Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy raised a number of points. I will deal with them, but not quite in order. I turn first to disability proofing.

We do it in practice but we are developing a defined policy in the Department to put it on a firm footing. We do it but it is something we are looking to ensure is there in writing.

The work of the steering committees has been acknowledged and certainly the steering committees within each local authority. As the Deputy will be aware, if funding comes through CAS and if 100% of funding comes in, they all come off the local authority housing lists. If 95% is granted, the AHB can continue. Typically, in the main, they are virtually nearly all 100%. Regarding the support services, the steering group should be working on that. I hope our implementation plan will drive that because what we are looking at is two quarters already where we get an indication from every local authority as to the actions they have and have not implemented. If the members have any specific questions around any particular case, they should come back to us.

Regarding the national standards, the National Standards Authority of Ireland, officially under the aegis of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, has recently commenced work on a new national standard for universal design housing which will be done in collaboration with interested parties. Within our own Department, we have set out design guidelines to local authorities regarding people with disabilities. If it is apartments, as members are probably aware, we look for an additional 10% communal area above the normal allocation. The Deputy made reference to the targets. We have an overall target for housing delivery within Housing for All. Regarding disabilities in particular, it is a bottom-up approach. Each local authority has to come up with a housing delivery action plan. Within that, they base that around their needs. We have a housing needs disability assessment criteria as well. The ESRI is currently doing work for us on population trends and so forth. Within the Department, we then formulate a more updated version of that and that will feed into the housing delivery action plans as well. It is up to each local authority. The one thing we want to get back from the local authorities is that they provide us with the data on the number of people they are delivering through the SHIP scheme - those who are housed and those with disabilities - and then the summary of social housing needs for which each local authority provides. It is something we will look at. When that began in 2021, there was no requirement that it would be wheelchair-livable accommodation. We have asked them to provide that for the data coming through in 2023. The Deputy is correct. I would hope that this year we will have every structure in place to collate all the data she mentioned, so that we can basically deal with the approved housing bodies, the local authorities themselves, through our implementation plan for the national disability strategy and that with that quarterly report that is coming through from each local authority, we can drive the delivery. Back in December 2021, each local authority submitted a housing delivery action plan and it sets out the details of each local authority that has social housing over the period 2022 onwards and the reformed targets for social housing. Obviously, we will be looking at them based on the needs assessments. The big component for me is that with the supply of social housing needs, we get that data. Furthermore, regarding the delivery under the SHIP scheme by the local authorities themselves, we get to see the numbers they have housed. Then every quarter, the data comes in to us and we will see how it is being delivered. We will review the national strategy. That review will take place this year. I wanted to allow the implementation plan a period to bed down before we did the review. It comes back to the need for structure and empirical data. That is something of which we have a certain amount but I want to get more.