Ms Catherine McGuigan:

I am delighted with the standard of the questions from Deputy Ó Broin. I really like what he said about the five big-ticket items because that is what we are looking at. He mentioned the housing adaptation scheme, a decent review of the scheme and a projection of the population growth in the existing housing stock, both in the private and social sector, in order to determine what we are going to require, so it is not reactive and a case of putting resources in whenever the critical incident happens. To take up what Senator Murnane O'Connor said on having it open all year round, a person can have a bad fall in the month of June; it does not have to happen in the winter months. There are definitely measures whereby such issues could be reviewed. I agree that the purpose of this group is not to review the housing adaptation grant, HAG, the mobility aids grant, MAG, and housing aid for older people, HOP, because that is not what housing for older people is going to look like in the future.

Deputy Ó Broin asked a number of questions. Copies of the SLIOTAR housing research have been circulated to the Clerk. We have all our publications online but I am happy to provide copies. That particular research was a review of the Great Northern Haven, in which Mr. Bond was involved, and it looked at some of the models, such as support co-ordination in London and Germany. Basically, 11 recommendations were made across the four considerations, such as the physical considerations of bricks and mortar, as well all the things Deputy Ó Broin talked about. The fluffy side is so much more important now. I refer, for example, to all of the community supports and activities that enable people to have transportation and social participation, which are so critical to housing, as well as the technology supports.

Deputy Ó Broin referred to the draft policy and the two actions in Rebuilding Ireland.

If one looks across multiple strategies and policies, in the rural development plan, for example, they look at brownfield sites over shops. We have one project in Meath at the minute. Mr. Lynch has a site right in the centre of town, within 300 m of the acute hospital and the pharmacy; it is a derelict site and there are four one-person dwellings going on it. We have built in universal design, very simple things like a door entry system, Cat 5 cable to enable technology to go in, age-friendly parking right beside it for the rural transport company to take them to acute appointments. That is a very small site, but a very replicable example.

When considering models, the housing agency and ourselves are looking at different models around the country so that we can put a proposal together, which includes mixed tenure and different allocations, not just social housing being built by local authorities. There are ones being spearheaded, as Mr. Moynihan mentioned earlier, by local ambassadors, approved housing bodies, developers or whatever the case may be. They are also included in that draft policy that the Department is going to produce. We can certainly link that.

In terms of crunching down even further and looking at the universal design, a full suite of universal design, obviously, by virtue of what is there, is more costly. What is mandated currently is part N on age-friendly design which would be extracting what we would feel is critical. In that housing and public realm training that we spoke about earlier, we have been delivering that across all the local authority areas. That is how we are getting in and saying this is what we need to be thinking about, this is what one needs to be cognisant of. Even in Meath our whole county development plan is stitching in that age-friendly ethos. We would like the next tranche of these plans to be taking the same approach.

Dr. Gerald Craddock, from the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design has helped to co-design our housing and public realm training. He is also doing a piece of work with Clúid Housing at the minute on a cost-benefit analysis. This will enable us to look at how much more is it per square metre to build in an age-friendly way, to build universal design. What is really important when you have the metrics and the figures, is to be able to say, if one does it this way this is what one save down the line. That needs to be made attractive to developers or whoever is going to be doing the building work.

I will certainly be happy after this meeting to provide the Deputy with all of the publications, all of that research, because that particular SLIOTAR housing research is what we recommended the Department to put into their draft framework.

I think I have covered everything there. I want to reiterate that the HAGs, MAGs and HOPs are very important and maybe Mr. Lynch may want to add to this. We can increase the budget and keep it open but I do not believe it is going to be the big ticket item, in those top five.