Mr. Peter Dorman:

Two questions were addressed to me, one on private accommodation and one on hard cases. With regard to private accommodation, there is public housing, approved housing bodies and private accommodation and some cases in between where people on local authority estates are being helped to buy their houses. The question of vicinity is important. It is very much an issue outside Dublin as well as in Dublin. If there is a local authority estate where someone has purchased a house or is renting it privately and is engaged in serious antisocial behaviour involving criminality through the drug trade, the local authority says there is nothing it can do as a sanction. If local authorities take responsibility and say they have a duty to protect their tenants who live within the estate, the question of vicinity is important. If a person is in private accommodation but dealing drugs around the estate, the local authority can say that it must protect its tenants.