David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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In spite of all that, each local authority, under the Act, is required to prepare, adapt and implement a five-year rolling plan. This Act exists and it is the law of the land. To get down to the nitty-gritty of the concrete issues, are these plans being produced in each local authority area? Are they being rolled out? Are they being evaluated? One thing this committee could do almost straight away would be to contact each local authority and ask them to forward on their current plans, if possible, to allow us to see where these are at. I think we should also write to the Minister to ask him his plans to establish the national authority, which is what the witnesses are talking about. I suggest the committee should do this straightaway.

We may return to the issue of where the local authorities are with respect to their five-year rolling plans later. Turning to the caravan loan scheme, it appears to me that €40,000 is not enough at all. Second-hand trailers are being bought. We are all talking about energy conservation, the SEAI, etc., but nothing about this is involved in this context and so these caravans cost an awful lot of heat. There do not seem to be any standards in place in this regard. A sum of €40,000 is not enough.

Can the witnesses tell me about the payback situation? I have read that, at times, the accommodation becomes almost obsolete before this type of loan is paid back. What kind of pressure are people under to pay back the loan? Would we be better off moving to a grant situation, where people would get a grant, with no payback? The other option would be for these homes to be produced and delivered by the State to the families in need. This seems like it should be an easy kind of thing to do, but this present scheme seems to be very difficult to work and manage, expensive and not fit for purpose. This is from what I can see of it. Mr. Joyce and Ms Brack are on the ground, so perhaps they can give us an indication of what is happening. These are my two questions, the first on the local authorities' plans and the second on the caravan scheme and how it is working.