Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 10 October 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) (No.2) Bill 2024: Discussion

1:30 pm

Ms Lyndsey Anderson:

Could I make one other point? With regard to checking or considering numbers around affordability grounds, the Deputy mentioned about bringing in the LDA and getting numbers from it as well. That speaks to a broader issue with the cost-rental model in general. Mr. O'Gorman made the point previously that for the public to really understand the cost-rental model and for us to be able to communicate it in a way people outside of the housing realm will understand, we need to keep it as simple as possible. What we have seen over numerous years with the CSO, for example, is that people who occupy their homes in social rental are not aware of how exactly they are occupying their homes all the time. They do not necessarily know that it is through an AHB or which AHB it is, or if it is w local authority. The same will ring true for cost-rental. Treating all cost-rental providers equally or as close to equal as possible will be really beneficial for ensuring our communication around the tenure, generally, to the public and to potential applicants and later tenants, will be really useful. At the moment, we are delivering in urban areas. Mr. O'Gorman mentioned how careful we need to be in ensuring there is a continued and ongoing demand and need for those units. What we do not want to do is create different tiers of cost rental where then there is a competition within a local area between schemes and the different rents and structures that are applied. All of that just speaks to that general approach whereby if we can keep it as simple and straightforward as possible, it would really help us with all of that communication.

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