Ms Kathleen Holohan:

Some of the comments in our submission are in the context of transparency and, as I said, we want to be as transparent as we possibly can be with people who are seeking housing from the local authorities. As Ms Mulholland has said, part of the challenge is that we have to deal with exceptional circumstances. We are dealing with homeless, medical and emergency cases, and that has become more difficult in recent times because of the increased levels of homelessness and an increase in some local authorities in medical cases as well. One may run the risk of giving an applicant the impression that he or she is likely to be housed in six months to a year, and then something happens which means that does not happen. This is particularly the case in areas of high demand or where there is a smaller amount of accommodation available. If an emergency occurs or somebody must be housed because of a compassionate situation and there is very limited stock, it causes difficulties. It would be something that we would be interested in trying to standardise as much as we could across the system.

There have been some efforts to improve the bureaucracy and paperwork in the administration of housing.

Earlier, I mentioned Monaghan County Council. It has done considerable work in its processing and its ability to process housing applications using a paperless system. In recent months, local authorities in the south eastern region met to consider how we can move that forward. Data sharing is another area being examined. Under an ongoing project between the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection and Cork City Council, the candidate local authority under a national programme board, the Department and local authority share data. The system allows for the extraction of information required about a person. Not only can this be used for the housing application but also for the assessment or a rent review, for instance. We hope that type of exercise can be expanded with other State agencies but that will require work to the information technology systems on both sides. Someone applying for social housing, for instance, will need a form stamped by the Revenue Commissioners declaring whether the applicant is in receipt of tax relief on a mortgage. Most local authorities do not have a Revenue Commissioners office in the county. In some cases, such as Kilkenny, the Revenue Commissioners office is not open to the public. That is a challenge in itself for housing applicants.

At a general level, the County and City Management Association, CCMA, is looking at the current housing IT system. Most local authorities use a system called iHouse, although the Dublin local authorities use a different system. A project board is in place to upgrade the system to achieve a much better, more user-friendly system with greater functionality across the sector.

On the housing needs assessment, it is possible to do an analysis to show the length of time on the list and the age profile.

On home visits, traditionally some of the bigger local authorities inspected accommodation at the time of the application. Inspections were not always done and they have been somewhat reduced in number. They were used in the past, particularly when there was a points systems and it was necessary to calculate whether accommodation was overcrowded under legislation. Our view is that home visits would bring about a better understanding of the circumstances in which people are living and would be a form of outreach to the housing applicant, especially those who might have challenges in terms of their ability to communicate with local authorities or understand the system. However, as we noted in our submission, this approach would be resource intensive.

Similarly, the comment on the definition of homelessness relates to transparency. Currently, local authorities are trying to provide solutions for people who are at risk of homelessness. A definition is not provided for in the legislation. We raise this issue in the context of providing clarity for everyone involved.

The project I outlined in Cork is an example of the transfer of data, an issue raised by the Deputy.