Ms Denise Doyle:

Regarding the Deputy's queries on the caravan loan scheme, in 2022 we had 20 applicants and we had no quota limit as to how many we could offer.

Eighteen applicants were successful in 2022. The two that were unsuccessful were due to arrears owing.

In terms of the criteria being too strict, certainly in the emergency grant I would say they are. No criteria are set aside for medical or mobility issues, which is seriously hampering our ability to successfully house in culturally appropriate homes people with medical or mobility issues.

There has been no drop in applicants on our end. There were 28 on the waiting list for 2023. We only received eight loans in the first round of offers from the Department. Therefore, eight were filled from the waiting list. As I said earlier, nine were given emergency grants. That was based on our inspection of their current mobile homes. The emergency grant criteria cover storm, fire and flood. Unfortunately, therefore, if there is a leak in a mobile home, that is deemed to be due to wear and tear or the general age of the mobile home. It is not considered to meet the criteria of the emergency grant. The damage has to be done by fire, storm or flood. That has been set out in the circular from the Department.

With regard to delays in maintenance, particularly Cara Park, a lot of the maintenance issues have been addressed through the retrofit pilot programme that was completed at the end of 2023. Regarding delays in maintenance, we fall in line with the tenant handbook, and any maintenance or repair requests that are phoned into us are dealt with, if it is an emergency, within 24 to 48 hours, and, if it is not an emergency, because we have a quicker turnaround than standard housing for our responses to maintenance queries, are dealt with in a far shorter period of time. The period for standard housing when there is a non-emergency is six weeks, and we are far quicker than that.

We applied for stage 2 funding for the Cara Park development in December 2023 and we are awaiting the Department's response on that. We plan and aim to be on site in September 2024. However, we require full vacant possession of the site in order for the works to commence. We are dealing with the occupants of the site at the moment and trying to obtain alternative accommodation for them to facilitate their move from the site. As it stands at the moment, we are still planning to commence works in September of this year. I believe it is a two-year timeframe for completion.