Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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This is the problem when the Deputy comes up against facts. They are quickly forgotten and he goes to mantras we have heard before. I had this in the Seanad last week during debate on the rent Bill. I had to make the same arguments again, even though I had already made them in the previous week with the same representatives from Deputy Ó Broin's party because they were not listening or did not like the facts. I am sorry if some of the facts are uncomfortable for Sinn Féin, but it is the case that we are making progress on the supply of new homes through Rebuilding Ireland. I believe we are on course to meet the fundamental supply targets we have set for new homes available to use this year and in the following years. We are not building all of these homes ourselves, of course. Reaching these targets is about pulling the right levers and making the right changes in law and regulations to allow the sector to do more, and the sector is doing more as a result of the changes we have made. This is not an exact science, however. As I informed the committee earlier, when Deputy Ó Broin was not here - I do not know if it was when he was out on the radio rather than at a housing committee meeting - we will see in the range of 23,000 to 25,000 new homes provided this year. I believe we will reach 25,000 new homes, which is the target, but this is not an exact science.

I understand the point Deputy Ó Broin makes about gas boilers. I do not want to say too much about this now because I am in discussions with the Minister, Deputy Bruton, on his climate action plan, but if we are going to have a target for phasing out, we certainly need to ensure we have security of supply chain at the same time. These are the things being discussed in detail in advance of the climate action plan going to Cabinet in the coming weeks.

Regarding co-living, any time we make a change in guidelines we absolutely must ensure we do not do anything that will reduce standards or have a negative impact on people who might be more vulnerable. Looking at the rent Bill that was recently passed, all the improvements we are making to standards, such as defining a substantial improvement and linking it to measurements such as the BER rating, are very positive. I refer also to the new inspectors we will have with the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, for enforcement and the increased number of inspections taking place under Dublin City Council. We are seeing a great improvement in the stock of housing coming online, with social housing being built today. The social housing being built today is phenomenal, as it should be. It is very important we do not let standards slip. Just as we have done with student accommodation, we are watching this very closely in the case of build-to-rent and co-living to ensure there will not be any unintentional redirection of a type of accommodation into something for which it should not be used.

Regarding the Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme, every local authority has been informed to continue to accept, process and approve local authority loans, so if Deputy Ó Broin has examples of people being refused, I ask him to share with me the emails - if he wants to anonymise the names, that is no problem - so I can get on to them and follow up on the cases myself. However, the fact that I have not yet agreed or published a financial amount that will support these loans that are being approved does not mean they cannot be approved. As I said, the Housing Finance Agency has a standing facility for the drawdown of loans that is quite significant.

Deputy Ó Broin made his point about social housing needs assessments. I made mine. We will not go back over that.

All emergency accommodation will be subject to the inspections and the standards in the framework. There is a complaint regime and process in place. I did discuss with the ombudsman improvements that might be made to the complaints regime to ensure that people feel safe and comfortable making complaints independent of the body or organisation that might be delivering the services. Accommodation site visits will commence next year. We will go to everyone, all service providers, and everyone will have to be compliant with the quality standards framework from, I think, the middle of 2020. The quality standards framework is very good, and we should not lend ourselves to the view that things may be happening in emergency accommodation that should not be happening. Again, I had an engagement with the ombudsman on this to ensure he was satisfied of certain things in the inspections he did. I am not saying we will not have an independent inspection regime in place. What I am saying is that we need to roll out the quality standards framework first, ensure that everyone is compliant, and then see where we go from there.