James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)

-----but it is up to the local authorities to do planned maintenance. It is up to them to ensure they have sufficient funding to do it. It is not for central government to be funding what is a duty of the local authorities. The reason some social houses have fallen into very bad disrepair is that planned maintenance has not happened. I talk to the CEOs across the country and I know what is going on in the local authorities. There is a difference in what is happening in them in relation to maintaining and preserving existing social homes.

On retrofitting, there are separate funds for that. That should be done on a planned basis. It should not be on an ad hoc basis that the local authority decides to retrofit this home here over or that home over there simply because it has become vacant for whatever reason. Retrofitting should be done under planned maintenance. You do not need a home to be vacant to do retrofitting. The time to do it is on a planned basis, identifying the houses that are going to be done next and retrofitting the entire estate instead of random houses. It makes sense economically and from an efficiency perspective. What should not be done is to have funding to protect people from going into homelessness used for other purposes by local authorities. Even if those other purposes are worthy, they are not more worthy than preventing people from going into homelessness. That is why I have stopped that from happening. If local authorities want to criticise us for not having enough money for doing A, B or C, that is perfectly fine but they should not use the money for preventing people from going into homelessness.