Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 23 May 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Local Authority Housing Waiting Lists: Discussion

9:00 am

Ms Catherine Keenan:

Deputy Eoin Ó Broin has mentioned that some people might go for a house in an area that is not so nice because they feel pressurised to do so. We found that people lower down the list were accepting them, not those high on it. When a person gets into what we call an "offer zone", we seek Garda vetting and so on. As people lower down the list would not be in that zone, it might take longer. We expect it to even out when we put everything not going on the priority list on the standard list for choice-based letting, CBL. We asked customers how they felt about it. They would like to see properties and more pictures of the inside of properties online. We can do some of this. Showing properties is difficult. It is very resource intensive. These were the things we had not foreseen.