Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)

Legislation states that they do not. The legislation is very explicit. This is why it was a surprise to me. The legislation explicitly states that if somebody wants to block a budget at an owners' management company AGM, they need more than 75% of the votes. What has been happening is good OMCs ask for a majority. They go to the meeting say they are presenting a budget. We had two cases recently where budgets were passed with 25%, 26% and 27% of the votes of the people in attendance. Likewise, good OMCs are putting operationally significant changes to car parking or clamping to an AGM. There is no legal requirement to do so. We have had a number of them where they are not doing it.

The next issue is transparency because the MUD Act does not list in any detail what information an owner has a right or entitlement to. Very often it is because the volunteer directors do not have the capacity and sometimes it is because there are conflicts of interest between directors who have commercial interests that they withhold substantial volumes of information. For example, recently I had a case where refuse charges went up 40% between one AGM and another. The OMCs should be obliged to present a justification for that. In this instance, it was justified, and that was the actual increase in the costs. However, the owners were not given that information before the vote and that created conflict and tension.

On the issue of tenants, I think of Seven Mills in my constituency. A minimum of 30% of the residents are tenants, including social, cost rental and possibility some private. Tenants have no involvement in the legal structures and decision-making practices of the OMC. I acknowledge Clúid has been proactive in getting involved. However, local authorities are not getting involved in its OMCs or are only belatedly getting involved. We need to have a conversation and I have not worked out what the solution is. Is it possible for a landlord to delegate the voting responsibilities at an AGM to the individual tenants? That could be a private landlord or an institution investor. If we want to build cohesive communities, we cannot do that if a third of the folks are not even allowed in the rooms. There are challenges to that as well, but we need some consideration of that. I wanted to raise that because they are newish challenges.

Electric vehicle, EV, charging points is becoming again a real challenge because local authorities do not have clear policy on this issue. Some developments have planning permission for some points. Other folks, because they want to do the right thing and get an EV, install their own charging point without permission. That has all sorts of complex legal issues. It would be good if the Department in conjunction with housing bodies and OMCs developed a good practice guide to try regularise where there are charging points that simply cannot remain as they are because there is legal liability issues, but also where we get into a situation where in the grants of planning there is far greater provision of EV charging points so people do not feel like they have to break the law just to put the point in. It is causing enormous difficulties. I am sure Mr. Lambe is dealing with a number of locations.

In addition to the historic issues, there is a new set of challenges. The sooner this committee can get working with the Department and the Minister on those the better because justice is never going to discuss these things. This committee has a vested interest in resolving it. This could be one where we get good cross-party and -government consensus on it, which solves the problems that the witnesses are bringing to us. I hope that at some point we are able to communicate this stuff to the Minister when he has responsibility because there are big issues in those areas. The witnesses may wish to respond.