Ms Mary Hurley:

I thank the joint committee for the invitation to attend the meeting to discuss social housing waiting lists. I am accompanied by my colleagues, 6Mr. Derek Rafferty, principal officer with responsibility for social housing reform, and Ms Marguerite Ryan, principal officer with responsibility for the housing assistance payment scheme and social housing co-ordination in the Department.

The supply of social housing is a critical success factor in the management of local authority waiting lists. Accelerating supply is something on which the Department and all stakeholders have been earnestly and intensively engaged in the past few years. In 2016 a special Oireachtas committee recommended that 50,000 additional homes be added to the public housing stock. Rebuilding Ireland will achieve that figure by 2021 through a range of build, acquisition and leasing schemes. In addition, it will deliver a further 87,500 housing solutions under the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme and the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, with the aim of meeting the housing needs of over 137,000 households over the lifetime of the action plan. Over the first two years of the plan almost 45,000 families and individuals have had their housing needs met.

A key priority under Rebuilding Ireland is to increase the level of newly built social housing year by year. In 2016 and 2017 delivery programmes focused on harnessing the best options available to secure early and increased delivery. It included acquisitions of vacant stock nationally, completions of unfinished estates, advancing straightforward build projects that could proceed quickly and ensuring maximum use was secured from existing local authority housing. In parallel, the new build pipeline was expanded significantly to underpin the much increased delivery projected for the years 2018 to 2021, inclusive. In 2018 we will see the results of enhanced building capacity across local authorities and approved housing bodies which will further enhance our capacity to meet individuals’ and families’ needs across the country through the provision of additional stock. The total target for all building programmes in 2018 is 4,969 units, which is more than 50% higher than the corresponding target in 2017. Overall, it is expected that more than 25,000 additional households will have their housing needs met in 2018.

Seeing ambition translate into activity is critical. One of the key outcomes of the second housing summit with local authority chief executives in January was a commitment to drive greater transparency and accountability at individual local authority level in the delivery of the targets under Rebuilding Ireland. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, has advised all local authorities of their social housing targets for 2018 and also the multi-annual period to 2021.

In setting these targets, the Minister was explicitly clear that they are minimum targets, and that where additional capacity to deliver arises, we will work in partnership with local authorities to accelerate delivery. He was also adamant that local authorities should be guided by the make-up of their waiting list, as set out in the detailed Summary of Social Housing Assessments 2017 report, as they plan and deliver these increased supports over the coming years.

Regarding the social housing assessment process, the new approach to social housing assessments came into operation in April 2011, under the social housing assessment regulations, as amended, which set out, in great detail, the process that must be followed by all housing authorities when making a determination on applications for support. This new process followed a two-pronged approach that required applicants to be both eligible for and in need of social housing support, but also restricted households by ensuring only one local authority could be applied to for support.

Eligibility for social housing support rests on the following four criteria: income, residency status, previous rent arrears and the availability of alternative accommodation. Once the household meets those criteria, the local authority progresses its application to the second phase, which involves making a determination of their housing need and this is done by considering the household's current accommodation against criteria set out in regulation 23 of the assessment regulations. A household will only be placed on the housing waiting list once the relevant local authority is satisfied it meets all of the eligibility criteria and has a housing need.

The summary of social housing assessments, SSHA, is now an annual assessment compiled and published by the Department with the assistance of the Housing Agency and the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA. The latest SSHA is in respect of 2017 and provides the most up-to-date, accurate and reliable record of the number of households which qualified for social housing support under the social housing assessment regulations and whose housing need is not being met. The data were compiled following a common methodology across the 31 local authorities and a subsequent rigorous analysis of the data collected.

The 2017 figure of 85,799 represents the "net need" position and was calculated, having excluded duplicate applications, households appearing on multiple lists in different authorities, for example, households legitimately on more than one Dublin-Cork-Galway list, households already in receipt of a form of social housing support such as the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, or the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme, and households which have applied for transfers.

The 2017 assessment was encouraging as it indicated a drop of more than 6% in the numbers on local authority waiting lists across the country from just nine months previously. This is a very early indication of the positive impact of the various delivery measures under Rebuilding Ireland but also signals clearly that there remain many qualifying households whose needs are still to be met.

The ongoing multi-annual funding resources provided through Rebuilding Ireland are allowing us to continue to respond in a significant manner. More than €1.4 billion was provided for investment in housing in 2017 and this is being increased significantly to €1.9 billion this year. This investment will fund substantial delivery activity and ensure that we make further significant progress towards meeting the overall target of delivering 137,000 social housing solutions in the period to 2021, supported, as I said, by an overall Exchequer commitment of more than €6 billion over the six years to 2021. We believe this will effectively meet the needs of the vast majority of those currently on the lists.

Although the specific topic for this session is local authority housing waiting lists, many of the answers provided to the questions outlined in the invitation are likely to be more closely associated with allocation policy, as this is what provides the mechanisms for moving households from the waiting list into social housing supports. The two topics are closely related. Allocation is a key part of the social housing process and, under housing legislation, local authorities are required to produce an allocation scheme that will set out the manner by which dwellings will be allocated and the order of priority to be accorded in the allocation. It is important to note that producing an allocation scheme is a reserved function of the elected members.

While slightly different operational approaches may be followed across the country, all local authorities have one common policy goal, namely, to ensure that social housing goes to those households in Irish society who need it the most. That is also the goal of my own Department.

I thank the committee again for its invitation here today. Mr. Derek Rafferty, Ms Marguerite Ryan and I are more than happy to answer and questions or queries the members may have.