Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I welcome everybody to this meeting of the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage, which we have convened to receive an update on Housing for All. I welcome the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, and Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, and their officials to the meeting and thank them for their attendance. The opening statement and relevant papers were circulated among members in advance of the meeting.

I remind members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the place in which the Parliament has chosen to sit, namely Leinster House, to participate in public meetings. Witnesses attending in the committee room are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their contributions to today's meeting. This means they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting. Members and witnesses are expected not to abuse the privilege they enjoy and it is my duty, as Chair, to ensure it is not abused. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in respect of an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

Members and witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against either a person or entity outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

I invite the Minister to make his opening statement, after which we will go to the members for questions and answers.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Cathaoirleach. Gabhaim buíochas leis an gcoiste as an gcuireadh labhairt leis tráthnóna faoinár bplean tithíochta Tithíocht do Chách agus an dul chun cinn atá déanta ar chúrsaí tithíochta ar fud na tíre. I thank the Chair for the invitation to be here this afternoon along with my colleagues the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, and the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, to discuss the progress on our plan Housing for All and provide an update on its implementation. Significant progress has been made since the plan was published in September 2021.

While challenges remain in accelerating supply, affordability and homelessness prevention, we are unwavering in our determination to address the issues head on. Through Housing for All, we continue to focus on accelerating the supply of all tenures, reforming the planning system, enhancing the capacity of the sector and addressing viability, affordability and vacancy. The plan is working. More than 110,000 new homes have been built since the Government took up office in 2020. In April 2024, 2,828 first-time buyers were approved for mortgages. That means 134 couples or individuals are approved for mortgages for a first home every single working day.

There has been construction on more than 30,000 new homes this year, a significant increase most likely due to the development levy waiver and the Uisce Éireann connection refund scheme, which was introduced last year and extended this year. Unquestionably, this has had a very positive impact on ensuring schemes that were on the cusp of viability are now viable and have been able to start. We have been commencing approximately 360 new homes every single day since the beginning of this year. We want to do more but certainly have to tackle the issue of increased costs. The best way we could do so initially was to introduce this short-term, time-bound measure, which has worked.

All the indicators, including on completions, commencements and planning permissions, show positive momentum and strong delivery. I am sure members are aware of the latest report from EUROCONSTRUCT, an independent construction market forecasting network active across 19 European countries. It shows that Ireland is bucking the trend among all European counterparts by expanding construction output.

We are expected to expand by 3.9% in 2024, which is the highest in the EUROCONSTRUCT area, compared with a European average fall of 2.7%. Our focus is on building on this positive momentum and using every lever available to us to achieve more.

Housing for All is an agile plan with an annual update process which allows us to review progress and respond to challenging conditions. It ensures that attention remains on the key objectives of Housing for All. This evolving plan, together with a record of €5.1 billion in capital investment this year, reaffirms the Government's commitment to building on progress to date. Implementation of Housing for All has seen unprecedented achievements, including nearly 12,000 social homes delivered in 2023, an increase of over 16% on the previous year and the highest output since the mid-1970s. Since the launch of Housing for All in September 2021, to the end of quarter 4 of 2023, more than 5,800 affordable housing solutions have been delivered through the various affordable housing delivery streams.

Cost rental has been delivered in Ireland for the first time, with more than 1,700 cost-rental homes provided by approved housing bodies, local authorities and the Land Development Agency. More than 47,000 help-to-buy claims have been approved since the introduction of the scheme and are helping first-time buyers to purchase a new home. The vacant property grant has also been launched and indeed has been expanded. To date, more than 8,000 applications have been received and more than 5,000 have been approved. The local authority home loan has been expanded to support both the purchase and renovation of homes which are eligible under the existing vacant property refurbishment grants. Project Tosaigh, through the Land Development Agency, LDA, is helping to activate stalled developments to accelerate the delivery of up to 5,000 new homes for rental or purchase by the end of 2026. We introduced the secure tenancy affordable rental scheme, STAR, to bring forward more cost-rental homes. There have been 28 STAR applications to date, with the potential for more than 4,400 homes. Five contracts have been signed under the Croí Cónaithe cities scheme, which is supporting the delivery of 582 apartments for sale to owner-occupiers.

The first home scheme continues to grow from strength to strength. As members will know, this is the bridge the gap scheme. As of the end of last month, on 31 May, 10,174 customers have registered for the first home scheme. There have been 4,602 approvals and about 1,800 drawdowns. From meeting people, I know the importance of this scheme for renters and for those living in the box room with their parents. It helps to bridge the gap between the deposit they have and the purchase price of the home. I am sure that later in the meeting, we will address how we have further topped up that scheme with an additional €40 million of Exchequer funding, which is being matched by the mainstream banks. It has been an excellent success and we want to continue to accelerate it further.

We introduced new statutory protections for tenants and have recently extended the cap of 2% for rent in rent pressure zones to provide certainty and stability for tenants. The Government has also introduced the renter's tax credit and indeed increased it in the last budget. I want to see that further increase in the budget this year for our renters. It is a real measure to put money back in their pockets to help reduce the cost. It is €750 per renter, not per tenancy.

Members in this room will all be aware that the most significant reform of the planning system in over 20 years was conducted and culminated with the Planning and Development Bill 2023, which progressed through the Dáil just last night, concluding Report and Final Stages. I thank the Chair and members of this committee for their engagement, which was constructive in the main, and the work and effort that went into this. I intend for this Bill to move to the Seanad within the next couple of weeks for Second Stage, and then to move forward to Committee and Remaining Stages. It is a crucial part of planning reform. One issue that we have seen over the last number of years is that delays in planning lead to increases in cost and stifling of delivery and supply. While we are seeing supply increase substantially, we need to ensure that we have planning legislation and a planning system that is fit for purpose, modern and efficient, and which provides consistency, clarity and certainty to our planning system. I believe this legislation that will pass the Oireachtas is a once in a generation reform of our planning system and will have a positive effect in future.

This progress illustrates some of the achievements made under Housing for All but we are not stopping there. I am acutely aware that while real progress has been made, not everyone is feeling that yet, and we have more work to do. We continue to look at different elements of our housing system. For example, we are nearing the completion of the review of the private rental sector to ensure that an effective, affordable, safe and secure framework is in place for the sector. We are continuing to promote, adopt and accelerate housing delivery using modern methods of construction. I published the Housing Commission report and have asked the Housing Agency to carry out an analysis with costings, timelines and prioritisation of the report's recommendations to allow for full consideration. Once the work is complete, I will bring the policy recommendations to the Government. The outcome of this work, together with the publication of the revised national planning framework and the updated housing targets, will provide input to the next iteration of the Housing for All action plan, which will continue to build on the strong momentum that is already under way.

The committee is aware that Housing for All is a cross-government initiative with actions from many Government Departments. My colleagues and I will be happy to answer any questions we can.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I thank the Minister. I would also include in his remarks on the work that the committee has done that we could not have done that without the assistance of the secretariat, Anne-Marie Lynch and her team. Martin Hughes also played a massive role in it, as did everybody involved. I forgot to mention that in the Dáil last night. I did not get an opportunity to say so but it was an all-in effort from every aspect of the Oireachtas and it showed a good, collegiate democratic process.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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I thank everyone for being here today. Well done on the work in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. My first contributions will be on housing and maybe we can get to the other two aspects afterwards if time permits. The waiving of the development levies and the refunding of the water connection charges was designed to reduce the cost of homes being built and to increase supply. The other drivers of costs is construction inflation over the last years. There is a direct cost benefit from a reduction but also an increase in supply. Is the Minister satisfied that this worked as a mechanism for reducing the cost and increasing the supply?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I am. The ECB rate increase has had an impact on the cost of development finance, not only the increased cost of construction materials and labour. Looking back to 2022, what concerned us at the time was that we needed to get more commencements going to feed into the pipeline for this year and indeed next. The mechanism that we used provides between €13,000 and €20,000 of a saving per unit depending on the type of unit. It is not just for apartments but for houses and one-off homes too, because we wanted to make sure that those who were fortunate enough to be able to acquire a site but who are building their own home also benefited from this development levy waiver. I have had the pleasure of visiting many of those sites that would not have been built without this cost-reduction measure. It is time-bound and we reviewed it in April this year.

As the Senator knows, with her support and that of Government parties we extended the timeframe for the development levy waiver to the end of this year and the timeframe for the Uisce Éireann connection charge refund to 1 October. We have also extended the date for completion to 31 December 2026.

The response from the development sector has been extremely positive. However, it is not just about building homes; it is also a matter of people being able to buy them. Consider the effect of our having introduced the measure. There have been 53,000 housing commencements in the past 12 months, which is an incredible number.

The measure also benefits the delivery of homes through approved housing bodies. Particularly with the Uisce Éireann connection charge refund, there is a saving. We all hope and expect to see reductions in costs associated with development finance. We will keep that under review because it is a genuine issue. With many of the projects being built, we see double-digit interest rate costs on development finance, which has a real effect. As the Senator knows, the Government can do only so much. We are investing €5.1 billion, but to deliver the homes we need even for this year we need between €13 billion and €14 billion. The remaining money comes from private finance. Private finance is required but the measure certainly has worked.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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It was welcome that the Minister extended the timeline, and this was seen in the commencement numbers. There were 12,000 commencements in the first three months and 18,000 alone in the month of April. I do not know when it was last the case that there were 30,000 commencements in one quarter. What is the sector saying now about the expiry of the development levy waiver and the water refund?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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We were able to flag it with the sector in good time. Obviously, I had to get Government approval because there is a significant cost involved. We cover the costs of the development levy waivers directly, so no local authority is out of pocket at all. These are real commencements although some have been saying they are just commencement notices. There are much stricter criteria in this regard. We have a completion date for the scheme, so if a project is not completed by 31 December 2026, the money must come back. The sector realises the measure was a short-term one we took to ensure schemes that could not start because of increased costs would start.

If anything, the challenge now is to increase capacity within the sector. We have about 30,000 more workers in the construction sector now than before the pandemic, and we are seeing a move of construction workers from commercial projects to residential projects, which is welcome. The commencement figures for the first quarter of this year are extremely strong. We will not be complacent about this but the figures show the plan is agile. This was not a measure in the original Housing for All plan. Any plan that comes forward has to deal with the environment that exists. We will never have a fair wind right the way through. In this regard, we have dealt with Covid, supply chain issues associated with the war in Ukraine and near hyperinflation, with double-digit inflation affecting material costs, but we have still been able to increase housing output substantially from 20,000 in 2020 to about 33,000 last year. I expect the number to be between 35,000 and 40,000, if not more, this year.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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Can I ask one more question? Those questions were around new supply. We all agree that the fastest and most sustainable way to increase housing supply is to reuse vacant and derelict properties. It is indisputable how well received the Croí Cónaithe vacant and derelict property grants have been. It is important that funding was given to the local authorities to appoint vacant housing officers and that funding has been administered locally by the local authorities. The scheme has worked very well. Could the Minister clarify whether every one of the 31 local authorities has now adopted the local authority home loan for vacant properties and combined it with the vacant property grant?

I appreciate that there is a 13-month facility for people to complete works in order to draw down the grant, but there have been requests to extend it. I know that will not work in the Government's favour because it will be used by others to say the grants are not being drawn down, but the reality is that people using the grants, which are really valuable to them, are asking whether the drawdown period can be extended to up to 18 months to allow them to complete the works.

Has consideration been given to the staged payment of the grants? This has come up. I have heard the arguments for and against staged payment. I would like to know the current position of the Department on the matter.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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I will deal with the questions in reverse order if that is okay. The issue of staged payments has been raised a good deal by Deputies and Senators over the past couple of months. There is no doubt that the measure has been very successful. It has been transformative from a heritage perspective and it brings many important buildings back into use, with families living in them. That is what we want to achieve.

With regard to the staged payments, applicants can apply for the local authority home loan and use this for the front-loading of the payment while waiting. The Department has been engaging positively with Banking and Payments Federation Ireland. Some banks do have products that exist for bridging finance for the grants. That might offer some comfort. Staged payments would be very tricky and difficult to implement or administer, as the Senator can appreciate.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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I agree.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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As stated, some banks are already providing bridging loans by way of support. That is probably the best way forward to address the issue.

The local authority purchase and renovation loan is expected to be implemented in mid-July, which is positive.

The other question was on whether there are vacant homes officers in every local authority. I think they are almost all covered. We are working to achieve an interdisciplinary approach, with town centre first officers, vacant homes officers and such staff. In conjunction with the Heritage Council, we have been trying to have an architectural conservation officer in every local authority.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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Excellent.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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Not all local authorities have them. We think good conservation advice is beneficial, as is having a network of architectural conservation officers across the country. They all meet different challenges. If the wrong intervention is made on an historic building or heritage building, it can have pretty devastating consequences for its fabric.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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I absolutely agree. May I remind the Minister of State-----

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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The Senator is nearly at ten minutes.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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-----that he did not answer one question, the one on the extension from 13 months to 18 months. If the Minister of State can come back to me with an answer on it, it will be fine. I do not need an answer now.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I can answer that one. The vacant homes officers grant extensions of the 13-month period on a discretionary basis.

Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)
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The Government has given discretion to them. Excellent.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister for his opening statement. The facts are that his plan is not working and that he carefully avoided all the evidence which shows that it is not. House prices have never been higher in the history of the State, making it increasingly difficult for people to buy their own homes. Interest rate cuts that we expect to come quite soon are likely to fuel further house price inflation. Data from the Residential Tenancies Board indicate that rents for new and existing renters continue to rise, and way beyond what is affordable. There are double-digit figures for almost all counties in the case of new rents, with an average increase of 5% for existing renters and some counties experiencing much higher increases.

Probably one of the most concerning aspects, and one of the Minister's greatest failures, is that the number of new homes coming on the market for people to purchase is stagnating. Independent analysis shows that the number of homes built last year that people were able to purchase was lower than in 2022 and approximately the same as in 2018 and 2019. Therefore, despite a modest increase in overall supply, in real terms the number of homes for people to purchase is flatlining and clearly not in line with the targets in the Minister's plan.

The Minister keeps missing his social housing targets. The most concerning point is not that the targets are missed but that only about half of what is actually required overall is being delivered. Of course, we cannot get an accurate picture of the overall level of need because the Minister will not allow the Housing Agency to publish the data properly through the housing needs assessment report. It is very clear, however, that we need about twice the number of social homes currently being delivered.

On affordable housing, which I will focus on in my question, not only are the targets too low and have been missed, but there are also real concerns around the pricing of those houses. The biggest failure the Minister has had during his time in office is the month-on-month increases in homelessness, including single-person, family, child and pensioner homelessness. Those are the facts and the real impacts of his failing housing plan. The consequences for people throughout the country are huge insecurity, especially for those in the private rental sector; increasing levels of overcrowding as more and more adults are forced to live with family and friends; real financial hardship with people struggling with high mortgage costs and high rents; and emigration. This is the first time in the history of the State that people are being forced to emigrate not because they cannot find work but, rather, cannot secure affordable homes.

I will focus on the following. We have had many debates about the Government missing its affordable housing targets. In 2022, it was to deliver 2,100 affordable homes through local authority-approved housing bodies and the Land Development Agency, LDA. It fell short of that by 52% with just 1,007 homes delivered. Last year, the Government was meant to deliver 3,500 affordable homes under those schemes but just 1,368 were delivered; it missed its targets by 61%. The most concerning thing is the cost of those homes. I am looking at a number of schemes under the affordable housing fund. In Ballincollig, Cork, for example, the entry-level price or lowest possible purchase price is €321,000, but the full price that will eventually have to be repaid by the owner is €395,000. In my constituency, at Seven Mills, the lowest entry price for a so-called affordable home is €335,000 and the full market price that will have to be repaid in the end is €435,000. In the Minister's constituency, and I accept this at the upper price change, the entry-level price for a so-called affordable home is €465,000, with the full market price of €565,000 to be eventually paid. Looking at cost rentals, it is the same picture. The LDA acquired a development from Cairn Homes, in what is now my constituency, in Citywest. The rents are eyewatering. Entry-level rent is almost €1,400 for a one-bedroom unit, almost €1,600 for a two-bedroom unit, and almost €1,800 for a three-bedroom unit. A gross income of between €75,000 and €100,000 is needed to be able to access those.

I ask the Minister to address the following issue. Affordable housing was primarily for those people-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I am listening to the Deputy.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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-----unable to access social housing or market housing. These were households on incomes between €50,000 and €70,000. However, in terms of the affordable housing fund, the cost-rental equity loan and the LDA, increasingly, those people are being priced out of the Department's schemes. Is the Minister concerned at the rising cost of affordable rents and affordable purchase prices under the schemes? Does he have any plans to try to bring those costs down so people, or households, who are on gross incomes of €50,000 to €70,000 can get access to these homes because right now they cannot?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I wholly reject the Deputy's analysis. I will answer his question first and then look to what the alternatives are. This year, we will deliver more than 6,000 affordable homes through our delivery schemes. Last year, more than 4,000 were delivered. Looking at the pipeline of affordable housing through local authorities alone, we have approved more than 5,000 for affordable purchase. That does not include cost rental through the LDA, which is now delivering at scale. Schemes the LDA is building itself can now be seen.

I will address the matter of the overall cost because I want to get under the bonnet of the Deputy's alternative, which he has not published. We use the affordable housing fund to subvent and take an equity stake in local authority affordable purchase. What I have seen in his "alternative", and I use that word advisedly, is that he is proposing to just provide a grant. His leader has stepped back from the €300,000 home and does not mention it any more, which is fine. She has now said it will be through an affordable housing scheme. We are focused on affordable housing delivery. We can have the political back and forth and when the Deputy's party publishes his alternative I will be happy to go through it. However, we are more than four years into this Government and the Deputy has not said what it will be, bar the fact that there will be a leasehold arrangement so an individual would buy a home that he or she does not own the ground on. The Deputy's proposal is that arbitrary salary caps would be brought in. I understand that salary cap means a couple earning €80,000 or more will not be able to access affordable housing. The Sinn Féin scheme will also restrict who they can sell the house to. It would be sold back to some State body that will hold the home and sell it on.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I ask the Minister to address the question please.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I am absolutely addressing the question because the Deputy's analysis of Government-----

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Is the Minister concerned about the cost of the homes under the Government's scheme? Has he any proposals to bring those costs down? It is a reasonable question.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I have two minutes and 40 seconds left. We have already amended the cost-rental equity loan, as the Deputy knows. We are taking equity in that as well. While he may like to talk down cost rental, it has been an extremely popular tenure-----

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The prices I outlined include an equity charge.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Chair, I am trying to answer the questions but-----

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Is the Minister concerned at the costs under his schemes? Has he any new proposals to bring those costs down so people on between €50,000 and €70,000 can get onto them? Those people are being blocked at present because the costs are too high.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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They are not being blocked. I will look at the delivery measures we now have, including the first home scheme. I will give the Deputy a real-life example. The week before last-----

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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My questions are about specific schemes.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I am not being allowed to answer, so I cannot answer the questions. If the Deputy keeps interrupting-----

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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If there are direct questions, direct answers would be-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy can come back in after. I ask for a little courtesy please.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Let the Minister answer the questions.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I am asking about these schemes. I am asking the Minister to address a very specific question. He has not addressed it yet.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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We were delivering no affordable homes before this Government came in. In the first year, 1,757 were delivered. In the second year, more than 4,000 - I think 4,017 - were delivered. This year, more than 6,000 will be delivered. Delivering homes through local authorities for-----

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister is avoiding the question, with the greatest of respect. I do not want to interrupt him-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy is not showing any respect because he is not letting me answer the question.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister is avoiding the question. He is also putting misleading figures to the committee.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I am not.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Please answer the question.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I will not be badgered. If I am asked a question, I am allowed to answer it.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Will the Minister please answer the question?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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If the Deputy keeps coming back and forth on this-----

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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We have a minute left.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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-----we could be here all day. The difference in our approach is we have published a plan that is funded, that shows the delivery and publishes, on a quarterly basis, what we deliver on social and affordable housing.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister is not addressing the question, with the greatest of respect.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I will say no more, Chair. I am not-----

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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In the last minute, can I have a-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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-----getting into this.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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That is fine.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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The Deputy can have a direct question in his last minute.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Here is the problem. I asked two very reasonable questions. One was whether the Minister is concerned by the rising cost of homes under the affordable housing scheme and cost rental because the agencies delivering those homes are concerned. I also asked him whether he has any plans to try to bring down those costs because a growing number of households for which these schemes are meant to be delivering are actually excluded. People on incomes below €75,000 cannot get onto the scheme in respect of the 400 LDA apartments at Citywest. For the affordable purchase homes, as they are called, in my constituency, a gross income of between €90,000 and €100,000 is needed, according to the local authority. When I asked the Minister those two questions, and I am deliberately not being belligerent today, he refused to answer them.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I have not.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The straight answer is the Minister is clearly not concerned about the price and has no proposals to bring down those rents or house prices.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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The Deputy cannot ask and answer the question, in fairness.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister had plenty of time-----

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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We have had ten minutes of backwards and forwards.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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-----and he refused and that speaks volumes.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I think-----

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Through the Chair, please.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I will behave myself, even if the Deputy has not.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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We have had this backwards and forwards for the past four years between Deputy Ó Broin and the Minister. It would be very helpful if members just asked direct questions and got direct answers. We are all here to try to get some information.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Hear, hear. I agree.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I agree.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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It is not a political debate in the Chamber. This is the Oireachtas committee.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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A few things have been said about people having to emigrate because of the housing crisis. If we are to believe what Deputy Ó Broin said, he is essentially saying that people are going to Australia because of housing and the issues around it. I will read headlines from the past three months in Australian news. These include: "'Recipe for disaster': Australia faces housing crisis amid ... decline in building approvals" from news.com.au; "Australians seek share houses in soaring numbers as housing crisis bites" from The Guardian; "Australia's Housing Crisis: Lessons for the World" from bloomberg.com; and "Proof Australia's rental crisis is getting worse as living costs soar across the country" from Australian Associated Press.

I am happy to live in a country where housing commencements now number 350 every single working day and, every single week, 500 first-time buyers are purchasing their first home. Of course, everything is not perfect and rosy. It is not anywhere in the world.

We need to be honest and upfront with people and show that progress is being made, despite what some people may try to present it as. Let us have an honest debate here in the committee rather than trying to score political points over and back. It is not helpful in any way. I will confine my questions to real issues in terms of trying to get progress on a few things. I will start with the disabled person's grants. Obviously these are really important grants for people to be able to maintain residents in their own home. Record funding was given for this to local authorities across the country last month. As we know, costs have increased considerably across the board. When will we have clarity on when those grants will be revised? I certainly hope they are being revised upwards because the people I talk to in my clinic are struggling to get works done.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Senator for his question. I know the Senator has been a strong advocate for the revised scheme. In May of this year, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and I announced an individual allocation in the region of €93 million for the housing adaptation grants. This provided a provision of €74.5 million from the Exchequer along with a 20% contribution from the local authorities. This represented a 12% increase of more than €8 million on the previous year's allocation. I recognise that there is an urgency in finalising the review for the current grant system in order to continue to ensure that the system is fit for purpose. We want to ensure that it delivers to the most vulnerable people for whom access to these grants is necessary, to ensure that they have a good quality of life and that they can adapt their homes in a meaningful and fit-for-purpose manner. At the moment, the report is being carefully considered, particularly given that it has been ten years since this important grant scheme has been reviewed. I hope to publish the report very soon, in parallel with finalising the new regulations to implement the review. My Department is currently engaging with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform in relation to the recommendations. This work will also include the development of the regulations, which are really important. Among the areas we are currently reviewing are the income thresholds and the grant limits. As the Minister has said, there has been a significant rise in the cost of construction and building materials. We want to ensure that the application and the decision-making processes - including the application itself - are more streamlined. I hope to be in a position by mid-summer to make an announcement.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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Mid-summer would be welcome news because I was just about to ask if the target was the end of the summer. I thank the Minister of State for that. I would like to address my next point to the Minister. Reference was made to the development contributions and Irish Water. What is the rationale for the differing time periods between the development contribution waiver and the Irish Water refund, namely, October and the end of the year? I want to try to understand that.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I was very clear when we brought it in, with the approval of all three Government parties and the support of Cabinet, that this would be a time-bound measure and that it would not continue for ever. The scaling down of the waiver is basically to send a very clear signal that at the end of this year, the development levy waiver ends completely and to show that the phasing of that is ending the Uisce Éireann-----

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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It a signal to the market, essentially.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Yes, it is very clear. That has been understood by them as well.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I know this is a straightforward question. I believe and I assume the Minister believes that we would not have had the same level of commencements if it was not for that measure being introduced by Government last year.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I completely agree. It shows the flexibility that I referred to. We need to have that approach, particularly when we are seeing increasing costs and recognising the need to reduce them. We worked very well with the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, Deputy Donohoe and the Minster for Finance, Deputy McGrath to get an agreement on that. It has made a real difference. I have met people in schemes that would not have been built without this.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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As have I. I agree 100%. There is no question but that some developments that might have started with 20 or 30 units would have then, in subsequent years, gone to another 20 or 30 units and a subsequent 20 or 30 have brought forward 100 of them together, which has driven the data and ultimately homes for people, because commencements become completions.

The Minister might recall that about two years ago, we introduced really good measures on which I worked closely with him in relation to the commercial to residential exemption from planning. We included former public houses in this. I have not seen the data for 2023 published yet. The early data for 2022, which was published in February 2023, showed that about 20% of the conversions under the scheme had been former pubs. Do we have the data for 2023?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Not yet. I can give overall vacancy. I want to say that the Senator played a key role in that. I remember visiting Waterford with the Senator. We looked at a lot of vacant public houses, many of them very substantial buildings. For some reason, they were not included in the original commercial to residential planning exemptions. It has been done really successfully and Waterford led the way on it. I am looking to see if I have the most up-to-date figure in this regard. The Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, has it.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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This is a most welcome scheme. By the end of 2022, the figures we had were the following: more than 900 notifications had been received, which could result in some 2,000 new homes being provided.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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We do not have figures for 2023?

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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Given that we are coming to the middle of the year, I assume that we should have the 2023 figures. I ask that they be circulated as early as possible. I assume we just have not got around to publishing it, as opposed to it not being available at this point in the year because it was published in February of last year for 2022.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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There has been a greater uptake as well. It can be seen in the quarterly reports that we are now including the vacant homes that are coming back in. I want to emphasise that the voids are not part of this. I always resisted that. The voids are separate. They are important under social housing. Actual housing stock that is coming back into use is being reported on a quarterly basis. We will follow up on the specific one about commercial to residential. Also under the compulsory purchase order, CPO, activation programme from the urban regeneration and development fund, URDF 4, we gave €150 million to local authorities. We have more than 1,200 properties approved for acquisition under this programme. This will deliver more than 5,400 residential units. Local authorities have been able to buy vacant properties through the URDF 3. They keep that money and we have already approved 1,224 properties that have been identified by local authorities. We do report on them every quarter and we will follow up on the commercial to residential conversion.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I want to add a point regarding the conversion from office to residential. This is an important space with a sub-committee currently in place which is examining the potential for the development of vacant commercial properties for housing. Work is ongoing to gather evidence regarding the regulatory difficulties for those redeveloping vacant commercial properties for housing. It is really important that we examine this and that the current planning exemptions that are in place for the conversion of commercial structures to residential structures are also evaluated. The working group, which has met on a monthly basis since January, is expected to present an interim report by the middle of the year. I am looking forward to the report being published and the recommendations coming from it.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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As I recall, Senator Cummins raised with me in the Seanad quite a while back the matter of the grant for conservation advice for traditional farmhouses. I am pleased to say that this scheme has now been extended to fund conservation advice for the refurbishment of vacant traditional houses in villages and towns as well. Again, this is a welcome addition. That conservation advice is extremely important in the context of the right direction that homeowners can take in the conservation and restoration of such buildings.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister and the Minister of State.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I welcome the Minister and the Ministers of State. I also welcome the team from the Department. Its members do a great deal of work.

I will focus on a few key issues. I visited the An Bord Pleanála website earlier. The Minister will be very familiar with the staggering number of housing applications that are stuck in the planning process. We have discussed this on numerous occasions. Every time the Minister has come before this committee, I have raised this issue with him. The Minister should be especially familiar with the numbers. There are major numbers from in respect of the Minister's neck of the woods in Swords. I have in front of me a spreadsheet from An Bord Pleanála which confirms that there are 21,746 houses in the system, some of which date back to 2022. Historically, we are aware of the issues around both those applications and strategic housing. I do not want to enter a blame game but Housing For All stated that all these houses would be built and that no one would be obliged to live in a hotel. However, we are moving on. I am sorry; that was Rebuilding Ireland, which was before the Minister's time. Anyway, let us stay positive.

The greatest scandal has to be that we have developers who have made submissions, which, on appeal - legitimately - to An Bord Pleanála amount to 21,476 houses. Some of these would have been built now had they got through the process. I accept that we must have a planning process. We will have an opportunity in next few weeks to talk about the Planning and Development Bill in the Seanad, but this number of applications in the system is simply not good enough. We have had changes in personnel and we have had investigations into An Bord Pleanála, but we are still none the wiser in respect of much of this. I am aware that due process is taking place, but try to explain that to the public. If I was writing a piece for one of tomorrow's tabloids, I would certainly be putting that on the front page. How does the Minister explain that there are 21,476 in the system? How will these be fast-tracked?

I looked at the figures for north County Dublin. There are more than 3,500 houses in the Minister's neck of the woods alone in the system. This has nothing to do with the Minister, and there is no blame on him. I looked at An Bord Pleanála's website. It has put up a simple message which states:

An Bord Pleanála currently has a significant backlog of cases. It is currently working to substantively clear this backlog in 2024. An Bord Pleanála apologises for the consequent delays in determining cases within the normal statutory objective time periods.

It is an absolute scandal that An Bord Pleanála cannot meet its time objectives. There is an issue relating to resources. Many of its people are on secondment. I know people working for An Bord Pleanála who have come from local authorities. I am familiar with the problems internally there. I just wanted to park this here. I ask the Minister to give us a quick comment on it.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Senator. We are all acutely aware of the issues that An Bord Pleanála went through. We have stabilised the organisation. There were as few as five members on its board at one stage. We basically had to stabilise and reform it. Part of the Planning and Development Bill that will be going into the Seanad is about the reform of An Bord Pleanála, which will become an commisiún pleanála.

We must look at why cases are before the board. There are cases brought to the board that would be questionable, but I respect the third-party rights that people are allowed in that regard. The important thing is what we are doing about it. We have approved 117 new posts for An Bord Pleanála, which will bring its staff complement to 313 people. Right now, 267 people are working there. These staff will literally go through the planning files. That is a 50% increase since 2021. That is the first thing. We cannot just throw a stone onto O'Connell Street and hit a planner, however. We need to have people with the requisite experience. An Bord Pleanála is continually recruiting. There is a new chairperson, who was appointed on a seven-year term, Mr. Peter Mullan, and 14 other board members now as well. They are holding parallel meetings to work through the backlog of cases.

I will give an example of the progress that has been made. Further progress is absolutely needed because we all know of cases that have been stuck there for far too long. If one was to talk to the man or the woman on the street about planning, probably the first word that would come into his or her mind would be "delays". Delays lead to costs. As stated earlier, delays lead to supply being restricted. An example of progress is that in April, the board disposed of 309 cases. That is 170% up on April of 2023. I met with the chairperson and the board about two months ago. They presented to the Cabinet sub-committee on housing in respect of their backlog plan. The chairperson advises me that by the end of the second quarter - in other words,, by the end of this month - we will be back to what would be deemed normal process.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I do not mean to be rude, but I am conscious of the time. I appreciate the Minister's response and I am aware that a lot is being done, but we need a dashboard up here. We need a dashboard on An Bord Pleanála's website because the public needs to know. I have one ask of the Minister, namely that we have a dashboard put up in place on the An Bord Pleanála website in order that there is full transparency. This is for people who want to buy houses. Many of the cases in question relate to apartments. We have an issue. I am moving on. I just wanted to raise that matter with the Minister again. I respect his work on it.

My next point relates to authorities. I contacted every local authority - in fairness, only yesterday - to ask them to provide figures on their housing voids or empty units. I had done a little work on this in the Dublin area already. I had photographs taken of these properties on a timed basis. Because some of them had gone for months, I was tracking a number of them in Dublin. I have evidence of the dates they were boarded up and the dates on which they remained boarded up. A number of local authorities do not have a clue about the number of voids they have. Some of them made all sorts of excuses, including that they were waiting for funding from the Minister's office because they needed sanction to get rid of these voids. I can think of two beautiful cottages on one street in Dalkey that are boarded up. We have issues here. When the Galway County Council chief executive wrote to me I was most impressed to learn that, lo and behold, he has the best system going. That council has a dashboard. There is a model in place in Galway. I ask the Minister to look at this dashboard, which has information on times, durations, HAP accommodation, property sizes, areas of choice, and approval rates. It is very impressive. I acknowledge the chief executive of Galway County Council. I want the Minister or someone within his Department to look at the dashboard and see if it a prototype for a model that we can apply across the other 30 local authorities.

Our councillors cannot get answers in respect of voids. I spoke to a number of them earlier. Our staff do not seem to know. Our directors of housing do not seem to know. That is simply not good enough. I will not name any more local authorities; I will just leave that matter with the Minister.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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That system is under development to go across local authorities in respect of planned maintenance. We have brought voids back into use, but I accept that work in this regard is sporadic and is not consistent across the board. I also see properties that have been vacant far too long. In 2023, we brought 2,481 voids back into use. The year before, the number was 2,273. In 2021, it was 2,425. I have seen local authorities - I will not mention which ones - where the timeframe for a property being vacant is 58 weeks. If you looked at that on paper, you would think it is crazy. The property in question was built in the 1960s. It was brought back into use, but significant money has been spent to future-proof it. Sometimes, properties require more work. We have a vacancy team set up in the Department. We never had that before.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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They keep telling me they are waiting for money for approval. They should have money on hand to allow them to get on with this work.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Just so the Senator is aware, €46 million is being recouped to local authorities for the voids programme. They make submissions to us on what voids they can get through. Some are long-term voids and some are relets. We do keep a really close eye on it. The Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, might want come in here.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I am conscious of time because I must leave. I intend no disrespect to the Minister or the Ministers of State.

I just wanted to flag that issue. I am conscious I am against the clock because I only have one and a half minutes left.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I will briefly add to the Minister's response. There is an ICT element that is really required for stock management. A pilot scheme was implemented last year; it will be rolled out this year. We will move to a more preventative maintenance system rather than a reactive system.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I will conclude on one other issue. There was a "Prime Time" programme last week, and there has been ongoing media commentary about it. The Minister may be prevented from speaking about elements of this, but we have a homelessness crisis. We also have a major crisis with the Peter McVerry Trust. It has been highlighted in the media that a vast amount of money was provided and that the Minister bailed out the Peter McVerry Trust. I understand why he did so. It was because we could not chuck the people who were availing of the service out of their homes. We have had to support them. We need confidence in our housing system. We need confidence in our corporate governance of housing associations, approved housing bodies, charities or whatever. There is a great deal of unhappiness and concern, particularly among members of this committee, about obtaining information. Will the Minister indicate where matters stand in the context of his ongoing investigations?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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This is an important issue. The Senator is perfectly right that my priority was to ensure that we could keep the service going for the service users and the staff.

Many really good people work for the trust. That is why we took the unprecedented step of providing funding to the tune of €15 million. There are two investigations being carried out by the Charities Regulator and the Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority, respectively. Those bodies are working through that process. I am aware of the further allegations that have emerged. All of the information is being looked at. I cannot comment further until those investigations are concluded.

I assure the Senator and the service users of the Peter McVerry Trust that the teams will continue to support the service. I have said publicly that reform of the trust will be crucial for the future. I see it very much staying in service provision as opposed to there being any further developments in the future. I do not see that continuing. However, I do not want to prejudice the investigations that are under way.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I understand that.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I fully understand the interest the committee has in this matter. At the appropriate time, once the investigations have concluded and the elements of the reports that can be published are published, my officials and I certainly will engage directly with the committee in this type of format.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I thank the Minister and the Ministers of State.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I want to talk about affordability and costs. Most of us are in agreement that the number of houses built over the next couple of years must be higher than the number arising out of the progress made under Housing for All. A figure of 50,000 was mentioned. Very few people are talking about affordability and how we can make a product that is quite expensive to build affordable for the people seeking to purchase it. We have introduced a raft of measures, including the reduction in the development contribution schemes and, at the other end, the ability for people to avail of first-time buyer grants, shared equity schemes, etc.

If the Minister had another five years in office, what measures would be introduce? Would he focus on projects using modular, low-carbon technology that allows houses to be built faster and involves a less intensive kind of labour? Is there a need for more standardisation in housing? In my previous job, I worked on corporation houses that were built in the 1940s. It did not matter if they were located in Crumlin, Bray or wherever, they were all identical. I assume that type of standardisation reduced costs. Looking ahead to the next two to three years, what can we do to make the expensive, high-standard product we are building a little more affordable for the average person who wants to buy or rent it?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I agree with the Cathaoirleach that the product being built now is substantially superior to what was built previously. It is very different from what we had in the past. We are producing A-rated homes using the best of technologies. The continued expansion of modern methods of construction, MMC, much of which is happening by way of off-site construction, is coupled with the increased use of timber and light-gauge steel. Many schemes across the country are being built using those technologies. NUA Manufacturing in Carlow, based in the old Braun factory, is engaged in a major investment and will produce hundreds of homes off site.

We have looked at standardisation in the provision of social housing. We have produced standardised design guides for five different house types for local authorities and AHBs building social housing. The documents provide guidance at a level right down to the layout of the homes. That process is in place and we want to accelerate it further. How do we incentivise that provision? As the Chair knows, and with his support, we have targeted 1,500 additional social housing properties over 31 sites through local authorities. They were encumbered sites. The €90 million-plus we took on board was on the basis that the homes will be delivered through MMC. The latter is where construction is at and where it is going. That is going to accelerate. I have referred to off-site construction and new building materials. I am particularly interested in the work being done by the interdepartmental timber products group around cross-laminated timber. That presents a real opportunity for us. It has not been used heretofore on properties over 11 m in height. The Cathaoirleach's colleague Deputy Duffy is very involved in that, as is the Minister of State, Senator Hackett.

What would we do if we had another five years? We would work on a further expansion of cost-rental provision. It is a really popular tenure. The secure tenancy affordable rental scheme, is open to ethical investment through private financing. It cannot just be the State doing this, although the State will continue to do it. Local authorities such as South Dublin County Council are building significant cost-rental schemes. The LDA delivery is accelerating and will accelerate further as more land is transferred to it. Three years ago, the LDA had not produced a single house. Its numbers were in the hundreds last year and it will build more than 1,000 homes this year. It is building on its own land.

We want affordability to permeate across the housing sector. However, we will still need supports like the first home scheme. That scheme will be with us for more than three years, and rightly so. It is important that the supports that are there for first-time buyers remain in place. As I said, there are opportunities that we are realising and using around MMC. All the homes in Monivea Road, the first cost-rental scheme in Galway, were built off site through MMC. That helps to reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve delivery timeframes.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I agree that we need private investment in housing. There is no doubt about it. People criticise it and use certain terminology in respect of it. However, as long as there is a transfer of affordability to the person who wishes to purchase or rent, it will be critically important.

Representatives of the LDA were before the committee recently. They talked about 14,000 homes being built up to 2028 and 2029, partly through direct delivery and partly through partnership arrangements with other builders. Is the Minister satisfied with the rate at which the agency is producing housing?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I am more satisfied now than I was previously. I engage with the agency on a regular basis. We are seeing own-delivery housing from the agency, including St. Kevin's in Cork, Devoy Barracks and Shanganagh. We will see more of that. I want to see the Colbert Quarter scheme in Limerick progressing. That development is really important. The LDA is moving ahead and scaling up its delivery. The first lot of capital we gave it is fully committed. That is why we had to further capitalise it.

Project Tosaigh has been very successful. The Cathaoirleach may have seen the press release earlier today outlining that the framework arrangements through the LDA for the next round of Project Tosaigh are in place. The agency has announced specific partnerships with house builders to deliver 5,000 new and, crucially, affordable homes. It is really scaling up its activities. The panel that has been put in place comprises some of Ireland's largest and most experienced home builders. This activity builds on the more than 2,800 homes already delivered or agreed by the LDA with its partners. In the next two years, the LDA will be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, builders in the State. It is already getting there. We have managed to scale it up in a very short space of time. The Chair will recall when we had no legislation for the LDA. Thanks to his work and that of the committee, and with the support of most of its members, we passed the Land Development Agency Act and capitalised the agency. It has used that capital to deliver affordable and social housing across the State. The future is bright for the LDA. It is scaling up now at an impressive rate.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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We also passed the Affordable Housing Act. When I think of the legislation that has gone through this committee over the past four years, I sometimes wonder how I ever got to canvass at any doors. We spent most of our time here in the basement. The LDA is transformative and will deliver on the legislation we introduced. Some members supported that legislation and others did not.

Senator Boyhan's point about a dashboard is critically important. When I talk to people and tell them that 33,000 homes were built last year and 37,000 or 38,000 will be built this year, they find it very hard to visualise that. When we go into an estate of 150 houses, we find that is a lot of doors to get around in two hours. The numbers are large;33,000, 35,000 or 36,000 houses is a large number of houses. It is like building Bray and Greystones in a year. A dashboard would be really helpful.

People are finding it very difficult because rents are so high. I totally agree that we must provide more cost-rental homes. We are trying to address building costs. Some of these are out of our control. The cost of energy and many other issues are feeding into the inflation relating to the cost of materials. A dashboard would help to provide an objective view of things for people, rather than having to reply on political or media narratives. Notwithstanding the ongoing difficulties, we are making progress. Anybody who is investing in housing, including the companies trying to set up modular, off-site construction, need to know what the trajectory or pipeline is and the direction we are going. Industry wants surety, and it is seeing that at the moment.

I have referred to community-led housing a couple of times at our meetings. It will produce a very small amount of housing but every house produced is significant. I tabled amendments to the Planning and Development Bill to bring community-led, co-operative housing into the housing strategy.

I know the Minister is working on a housing (miscellaneous provisions) Bill as well. I do not know if there is scope there to try to recognise community-led housing but it is an area I would like to concentrate on. It might deliver 30 or 40 houses per county but it is cumulative and important. It falls between a number of stools at the moment and I hope we can do something to assist them on that.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I am certainly open to it and I have met a couple of groups. We legislated for community-led housing for the first time under the Affordable Housing Act 2021 so it is recognised. It is a small delivery but there are some very impressive groups. There is one group in particular that I met on two occasions and my officials met very recently. I will not mention the group's name at this committee but there is scope to support projects there. They are quite niche in some respects. Some are nearly like pathfinder housing projects on the environmental side, particularly to look at new ways of building and new ways of living effectively. One thing I did not mention earlier about affordability is a very important piece of work we are doing are the compact urban growth settlement guidelines. That will drive further affordability and will ensure viability as well. That has been very well received and we engaged with a wide range of stakeholders on that too. That is in place now.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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I thank the Minister for his opening statement. There was no mention of homelessness in his opening statement; why not? Since he has become Minister, we have had record levels of homelessness. When he took office in June 2020, there were far too many people homeless with 8,699 people living in homeless emergency accommodation. There are now more than 14,000 people living in homeless emergency accommodation so why did he not feel this was worth mentioning in his opening statement? What is he doing about this issue?

It is very difficult to get into homeless emergency accommodation. I know of people who have been sleeping in their cars and trying to get into homeless emergency accommodation. It is proving very difficult for people who do not have a home to even get into such accommodation. There have been media reports in the Dublin Inquirer of the Dublin Region Homeless Executive tendering for 2,000 more beds for homeless emergency accommodation so is it the Minister's plan for homeless emergency accommodation to increase to 16,000 people? Will he address that area? I have a couple of other questions.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy knows, I have never shirked nor will I ever shirk my responsibility for the continued work we need to do about homelessness or those in homeless emergency accommodation. I mentioned it at every step so there was no particular reason I did not and I expected the issue to come up in this meeting. The really key to the issue is supply.

First, I will answer the question about the availability of emergency accommodation directly. There is no issue with availability of emergency accommodation. I chair the national homeless action committee. I meet with stakeholders, both NGOs and the DRHE. We have seen homelessness decrease substantially in large parts of the country. It is an acute issue, particularly in Dublin, Cork and Limerick and Galway to a degree and we have seen it in other areas. It is predominantly a Dublin issue and there is a draw towards the capital. According to the data, in 2023, there were 2,815 exits from homelessness. There is a big increase in exits and preventions with 6,848 exits, which is a significant increase from 5,478 in the previous year.

What is key to that is supply. I met with all the urban local authorities only a number of weeks ago. I will meet them again in July to impress on them the importance, now they have additional stock, to focus it on those who are in emergency accommodation. In the month before last there was a very slight increase in emergency accommodation numbers of approximately 20 nationwide. Again it was Dublin that drove that figure up. We saw a reduction in other parts of the country. Last month we saw a further increase but I am quite content with the fact that the additional social housing we delivered in quarter 4 of last year is coming onstream now. Our main local authorities are very focused, with their partners in the AHBs, on allocations to those in emergency accommodation, particularly looking at larger families where properties have been difficult to get and at singles where the predominance of the issue is for single people. It absolutely remains a serious challenge but we will continue to fund service provision. We are funding this to the tune of €242 million this year and if we need more moneys to fund it we will get it.

The big focus is on exits to permanent, secure housing. People who are unfortunate enough to find themselves in emergency accommodation are spending less time in emergency accommodation and more of them are exiting into permanent, secure tenancies and that is what I want to see.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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The Minister often references the exits and permanent, secure housing and tenancies. It is very welcome when people exit homelessness to permanent, secure housing tenancies. What he did not mention is that a lot of the exits are back into precarious situation with people sleeping on floors, couches and even ending up in hospital and so forth. When he speaks about exits, he should actually speak about how many exits are into permanent, secure tenancies and how many exits are back into precarious situations.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Does the Minister wish to respond to that?

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Then I will have two further questions after that.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I will be very quick. The purchase of homes and the tenant in situ scheme have been excellent preventative measures as well where we are ending insecure HAP tenancies. Last year we completed the purchase of more than 1,800 homes throughout the country. These were people who were on HAP tenancies, in the main, and now those tenancies have been converted to social housing tenancies. We are continuing that for this year. We have a pipeline of well over 2,000 homes and all exits are into a tenancy, be that with HAP, AHBs or LAs.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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No, they are not.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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If someone moves back home, that is also an exit if they are out of emergency accommodation.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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He or she has gone onto a floor or a couch.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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If people are exiting emergency accommodation the vast majority are exiting into permanent, secure tenancies and into HAP, AHB and LA tenancies.

Another thing we are doing, and there has been some criticism by the way and I want to mention it, is around the long-term leasing targets. I am certainly phasing out long-term leasing because we are delivering more homes but the long-term leasing initiative I brought forward is for 1,200 homes specifically focused on allocations to those in homeless emergency accommodation and I make no apologies for it. Others here have been critical of that initiative. I know from people who are in long-term leasing arrangements that they are much happier to be in them than in emergency accommodation. When I use another tool like that, I stand over it completely. We are targeting that around the long-term leasing targets for 2024 as well and focusing very much on those in emergency accommodation and prioritising them. A lot of those people are singles and we were able to get apartment-type developments.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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I have two further questions. It simply is not true that the vast majority of exits are into permanent, secure tenancies; that is not the case. Approximately half the exits are back into precarious situations with people back to sleeping on floors, couches, sometimes ending up in hospital and so forth. To give the impression that the vast majority of people exiting emergency accommodation are going into secure, stable tenancies is not the case. The figures published by the Department and the regional breakdowns show that.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I do not want to interrupt the Deputy but the exits that we track are to tenancies only. If I give a figure for quarterly exits, they are to tenancies. Let us be very clear about that. If someone moves home, that is not captured in the exit figures. The exit figures we produce are with the DHRE, for example, where we are tracking where people are exiting to. The exits are to tenancies only through HAP, AHBs and LAs. If someone, because of family break-up or because he or she has had a row with their family, moves home what we track is the tenancies that are created to LAs, AHBs and HAP, which are more difficult to get because of the constrained private rental supply. That is what we track.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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There are a lot of recommendations in the Housing Commission report in a number of key areas but one of the key arguments is that the housing deficit needs to be addressed and that there needs to be a delivery unit to do that.

When the Minister published the report he was quite dismissive of that recommendation. He did say he would take a closer look at it. Is that still his position? He referred to some of the views from the Housing Commission report as contrarian in the Dáil. Is that still his position?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Contrarian is a good thing. I did not mean that in any derogatory way. It is good that people have different views. When the Deputy reads the commission report, he will see that many of the commissioners had wildly differing views. That is a good thing. I established the commission. I will not go over that. We discussed that in the Dáil. The Deputy knows why we did it. It was to take a longer term-----

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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The question was really on the delivery unit.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I said I would examine the delivery unit in more detail, and I am. I am sceptical about it. I do not want to add another layer to housing delivery. The structure of what the commission is proposing is that the unit will sit in the Department of the Taoiseach with the private sector and so on involved, but we have structures here already. We have planning in place. We have local authorities, the LDA and so on. I am looking at it but I just said at first look it is not something I think would be-----

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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How long will the work the Housing Agency is doing take to complete?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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We have asked the agency to cost it. We are going through all the recommendations in detail and I thought it was best to publish the report when it was leaked. I did not want just part of the report to be there. We are going through that. We have asked the Housing Agency to carry out costings on some of the recommendations and to come back. A total of 18 recommendations in particular were identified by the commission as ones it would like looked at. I am going to focus on those ones first. We are not waiting for all of them. For example, in the commission report, it basically went through some of the key recommendations which it broke down to 18. They were the ones we are getting the Housing Agency to look at first. We are not looking at all of the rest-----

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Is there a timeframe on that?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Housing Agency has not been back to me yet with the timeframe. When I have that, I will let the committee know.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Finally, I just want to ask about the development levies being waived. Is that funded or is that just not funded? Are the levies needed for infrastructure lost altogether or is there replacement funding for them?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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They are not lost. They are funded. We paid the local authorities directly.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Were the paid in full?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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100%. Both Uisce Éireann and the local authorities were fully funded.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister's comments on long-term leasing because I have always argued for that, not as a replacement for permanent delivery but as an addition. A version of the long-term leasing is the repair and lease scheme, which has been hugely successful. He has seen the biggest development under that, which was built in Waterford. It has 71 units for older persons in Manor Hill. The Minister was there for the opening of it. It is far better for people to be in a long-term, leased property for 25 years than it is for them to be in a HAP property or in a hotel room, and anyone who argues the opposite needs to get their head checked.

I will touch on a few issues relating to Irish Water connections. It has been masked a little bit in the context of what we have done on the refunds. As the Minister knows, when people go into these older buildings and open them up, viability is the biggest challenge they face. That is why the likes of the repair and lease scheme has worked well. However, I am dealing with a project at the moment in Waterford city, which is the conversion of a former pub. There was one water and one wastewater connection to that building. There was bed and breakfast accommodation above and a full public house on the ground floor. It has been converted into eight apartments. I can understand that seven new water connections are needed for the provision of the water but the owners are being levied €27,000 in wastewater charges even though they are not actually going to have another wastewater connection and the capacity is going to be reduced. If we think about it, there was a public house and a bed and breakfast accommodation operation and now there are eight individual operations. That is a viability problem. I have raised this with Irish Water at the committee. Its officials are saying they are bound by the Commission for Regulation of Utilities that oversees Irish Water but that is a problem. It is a problem in bringing those brownfield sites back into use. In fact, nothing is required in addition and, therefore, nothing is being provided for that €27,000; it is just an extra levy on delivering those much-needed units in a city centre site. Will the Minister commit to taking that away or who will commit to examining that? It is a problem. I have raised it several times now. It has been masked as a result of what we have done in the past 12 months but it is a problem.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I take the point. I am not familiar with that particular case but I am familiar with the issue. It is something I will discuss with Uisce Éireann. However, Uisce Éireann is well funded and its capital plan is advancing. It also has been affected by increased costs on projects and we are working with Mr. Niall Gleeson and his team on that. Regarding particular connections, in that instance a vacant public house and bed and breakfast accommodation, which are already connected to wastewater, are being brought back into use, of course there will be additional costs to split that up. If the Deputy gives me that particular example-----

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I will. My argument is that if that pub reopened and the bed and breakfast accommodation was operating fully tomorrow morning, they would not have to pay anything for water or wastewater. The owners have no issue with the water charge because it is being separated into eight individual units but it is the same wastewater connection. It is going out the same pipe, an outfall. It is an issue of viability and I would appreciate it being addressed. It is just another issue that if we could get solved we would bring more of these units back.

I welcome our ambition in the cost-rental space. The Minister will recall when we were passing the Affordable Housing Act, I argued for that private sector piece to go into that legislation because I always believed we would not be able to deliver sufficient units through the AHB or local authority sectors. The STAR model is going to be an important delivery mechanism. The question I have relates to local authority delivery. Notwithstanding what South Dublin County Council has done or what Waterford City and County Council has done in bringing forward Ballycashin, it is an issue for local authorities in trying to get the numbers to stack up in cost rental. The AHBs now have up to 55% in terms of CREL borrowing at 1% and up to a 20% equity piece going into it versus the local authority, which has to borrow over an average of 40 years at 3.3%. When the figures are done on that, to get the equivalent value, if they are not getting €150,000 a unit under the affordable housing fund, the numbers simply do not stack up. We either need to make a decision that local authorities will have access to a CREL version or we need to just as standard say that if local authorities are delivering a cost rental scheme that they do have €150,000 per unit under the AHF.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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It will be one or the other and not both. The Deputy is correct. The AHF has up to €150,000 per unit for apartments only. I get that. Fingal County Council is bringing forward a very significant cost-rental scheme at the moment. I also mentioned south Dublin, Waterford and there are others. We are working through the affordable housing fund review to see. We changed CREL and the changes we made here were responding to the increased costs that were out there-----

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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For sure.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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-----and that has actually worked. The local authorities can borrow at a lesser rate as well.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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It is still 3.3% over 40 years though.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I understand that but we recognise that. We want to see more delivery through the local authorities too and thankfully we are seeing a number of significant schemes. It is something we are looking at through the affordable housing fund review to find anywhere we have been able to make changes that make sense. Obviously, we need approval from other Departments, and one in particular. We engage positively with this Department on it too. I would like more local authorities to get involved in cost rental. Thankfully, more local authorities are now and it is increasing.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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The Minister knows local authorities as well as I do. They will baulk at risk here and if they do not see a sufficient quantum of funding being provided through the AHF, they will not take the risk on it.

It is one or the other. If they get €150,000 for an apartment, it is fine and they will get it to work but they need €150,000 for housing units too. I have gone through the figures. With borrowing rates over 40 years, I do not see local authorities taking a risk if the cost is not covered.

Does the Minister have a comment on the gearing ratio issue the AHB sector is facing? Some AHBs are close to the maximum ratio.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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There are issues for one or two of the AHBs.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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Not the bigger ones.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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We are working through that. We have done a lot of work with them. There were meetings on it as recently as the week before last. We are nearing a resolution. The AHBs recognise that we have made some significant changes. These have been received positively by the sector and have made a difference for the AHBs. The gearing ratio raises particular issues for one or two AHBs and we are working that through. Detailed work has been done on that, which I hope will conclude shortly. I do not want to be evasive. I can talk to the Senator separately.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I fully understand. It is a sensitive issue but an important one if we want to keep maintain throughput in the AHB sector.

I have come across some issues with the affordable purchase scheme. The scheme has been very successful in Waterford. On the interaction with the banks and mortgage providers and the issue of standardisation of documentation, what comes first? Is it the legal documents from the local authority or the final mortgage offer from the bank? I solved one issue this week but it is a wider issue at national level. The local authority cannot issue final legal documents until it has received a final mortgage offer from the mortgage provider because the equity may change. Is that work being completed at national level?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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As with the other affordable schemes, we have worked on that issue with the Law Society of Ireland and the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland and that work will continue.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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On local authority voids and vacant houses. We have seen a very slow turnaround time in many, though not all, local authorities. What can the Minister do to help turn these houses around? In Cork city there can be up to 500 voids at any one time and hundreds more in the county. I am looking for a solution here. What can the Department do to turn these around?

I have a suggestion. Local authorities must apply to the Department for funding to renovate or repair these houses to get them back in use. I ask the Minister to give the local authorities the power to do the work so that they can turn them around as quickly as possible. I ask that funding be provided for one or more specific crews of carpenters, plasterers and electricians in each local authority, depending on the number of houses it has, to turn around vacant housing quickly. Is anything new planned to bring these voids into use faster?

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for this question on voids. Since the Government came to office, there has been a substantial increase in the level of funding to remediate voids and in the level of output in remediating them. When we took office in 2020-----

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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Sorry. I am conscious of time. We know where we are now.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Yes.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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Reports from the National Oversight and Audit Commission, NOAC, and others show that some local authorities are taking over a year to turn around a vacant house. I am asking what we can do going forward. I am not being critical but what we can do now? We have 500 families in Cork who could be housed tomorrow if these houses were given out.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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We are looking at stock condition surveys. That is something on which the Department is working with local authorities. We are also implementing information computer technology, ICT, to have real-time information on stock conditions. The intention is to roll that out to all sectors in 2024. It is work in progress. We are transitioning to a predominantly planned maintenance programme rather than a reactive programme.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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That leads to my next question about housing maintenance. There are 146,000 social houses in the State. Two weeks ago, Sinn Féin introduced a motion on housing maintenance. We appreciate that the Government did not try to block it and allowed it to go through. That is good because housing maintenance is a huge issue. I raised a number of issues in the Dáil during that debate, including the case of a woman who had a leak in her house since 2011 and no matter what we did, we could not get the leak fixed. I showed photographs in the Dáil and three days later it was fixed. How is it possible that a local authority tenant can be left 13 years with a leak in their house? We deal with cases where tenants have aluminium single-glazed windows in their homes. If the person dies, God forbid, the council will put in new windows and doors and re-let the property a couple of months later. Must it take a person to die? I am not trying to be smart. I know people this has happened to and it makes the families and local residents angry. Imagine living in a house for 30, 40 or 50 years and an empty house across the road gets fully retrofitted. We have seen this in Churchfield in Cork. The Minister promised retrofitting for Churchfield. That was reduced to retrofitting for Churchfield Avenue, which was then reduced to retrofitting for some houses in Churchfield. Is the Minister aware of how upset people living in Churchfield Avenue are when they look out their windows and see houses across the road being retrofitted while their homes are not being retrofitted?

I support planned and preventative maintenance and I want to see it succeed. Is there money available to local authorities right now to allow them to take on additional staff or contractors, both maintenance staff and administrators and engineers, to improve the quality of housing?

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The Government and Department are responding to the level of need. I echo the point that local authorities are in charge of these properties. We have made allocations. Last year, we allocated €46 million to fund local authorities for stock improvement work.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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It is a drop in the ocean.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I am just saying that is for stock improvement work. It is also important that local authorities themselves focus on the job they have and are in a position to rent properties in their ownership that are in a well-received condition. That is really important. The Deputy referred to the individual cases that are presented to him. He will know from his engagement with Cork County Council that this is its responsibility. We will continue to allocate funds on that basis.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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Cork City Council has 11,000 properties, many of which are more than 60 years old. As a result of the austerity measures from 2007 onwards, only emergency maintenance was done. This means Cork City Council is 17 years behind the curve. It never kicked up because local authorities will not go against the Department or Government.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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We will continue to work with the local authorities in each county on the needs they present.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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Will the Minister of State reinstate all the staff who were slashed after the financial crisis when local authorities were told not to take on any more staff? These are facts.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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There is no embargo on local authority recruitment. There are more staff being recruited into local authorities and there is more funding to local authorities than ever. In Deputy Gould's constituency, there is the Knocknaheeny regeneration scheme, which is really significant and which he has not mentioned. In fairness to the Deputy, he has been consistently raising issues around social housing, social housing provision and vacancy, and I respect him for that, but there is a responsibility on the local authority and local authority members too to budget. They are the housing authority for the area. We further support them through the funds we give. Looking at the regeneration programmes we are doing in his constituency, including a very significant one in Knocknaheeny, there are good things being done. We do, however, need to move, as the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, rightly said, towards planned maintenance. The local authorities - I will finish on this-----

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I support that move.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I know the Deputy does, and fair play, but a local authority such as Cork City Council needs to play its part too in that. It has a responsibility.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I am conscious of the time. Just to let the Minister know, the first regeneration meeting in Knocknaheeny took place in September 2000. I was at it.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Good.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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Twenty-four years later, it is not halfway done. The regeneration of Knocknaheeny could be used as a case study of how not to regenerate an area. I come from Knocknaheeny. Twenty-four years that regeneration has been ongoing. We will not get bogged down in that.

As regards dereliction and the derelict sites register, just to let the Minister know, I am not picking on Donegal County Council, but these are its figures. Donegal does not have one derelict site. That is amazing, is it not? This is from the reply to a question Deputy Farrell asked the Minister. Galway has four. Louth has six. The derelict sites register is a joke. Some local authorities are very good but the vast majority are not doing their job of putting sites on the register or levying money. I think half the local authorities have not levied any money. There is €20.5 million or €20.6 million outstanding on levies from last year. What is the Department doing? Why are the local authorities not doing their job? This is part of their job. We need the sites put on the register and we need the levies collected.

I will give the Minister the example of a case I have raised with him here of a butcher's on Blarney Street that was empty for 33 years. I got it put on the derelict sites register in Cork and I met the fellow who owned it and he gave out to me. Well, he did not give out to me but he slagged me. He said, "You put my property on the derelict sites register." I asked, "Was that your property?" He said, "Yes." "You bet your life I did," I said. Since he was levied, he has now turned the site into a three-bedroom apartment and a two-bedroom apartment. He actually invited me in there a few weeks ago to have a look at it, and I said to him, "In the name of God, how could you have left this lying idle for so long?" The point is that the derelict sites register works when people's sites are put on it.

My last point - I am watching the time - is about vacancy and the vacant homes tax. It is not enough. The one thing about the derelict sites levy is that it is 7%, so that levy would actually work if the sites were put on the register and the money levied. The vacancy tax, however, is so low that it actually pays people to leave the houses vacant because the value of the house is much more than the levy ever will be.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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There are, one could argue, inconsistencies across the country as to how derelict sites registers operate. We want local authorities to do their job. We have never had a better focus on vacancy. Every local authority has at least one vacant homes officer. We have a vacant homes team as well. There is the urban regeneration and development fund. In fairness, I assume the Deputy was in the Dáil Chamber earlier when I gave these figures. We gave out €150 million through URDF 3 and following engagement with local authorities over the past ten months the number of properties approved for acquisition through that is 1,224, with expected residential output of 5,406. That is a fund that stays with the local authorities, so when they sell the properties or the sites, the money goes back into the fund as well. We have already identified 1,224 properties there. I mentioned earlier - this is not specific to local authorities - the success of the Croí Cónaithe towns grant. People have been responding to that because they see older property and they can get the cost of purchasing those properties defrayed either to live in them or to let them into the private rental market long-term. We have received 8,194 applications to date, with 5,049 approved, so these-----

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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How many have been completed?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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There have been 375 grants drawn down. Does Deputy Gould want us to pay the money up front before people do the work?

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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No, but what-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Come on. Again-----

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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The money could be spread out as people draw it down. I am trying to be constructive here. It could be drawn down over time.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I am just saying, we discussed this at length earlier. Obviously, the Deputy had other meetings-----

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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Sorry, I was at the drugs committee meeting.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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That is fine. I know that. I am not having a pop, but we discussed this at length earlier. We have said we are looking at the completion time. The Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, answered that in detail earlier as well.

Staged payments, by the way, if we brought them in, would require additional inspections. If you are going to pay €20,000 at the start for €20,000 worth of work, you are going to have another inspection. I do not want four or five inspections through the process that will elongate the process even more. We are looking at doing things like the local authority home loan. We will have that product approved and launched, which will provide bridging for that finance on a very low-cost basis such that if you are approved for the grant, you can wrap it in. I got Cabinet approval for that just a couple of weeks ago, and that mortgage product will be available in July through the local authorities. We just have to be careful about staged payments. I am not saying no to it, but the process is simple now: one inspection at the start, approval, one inspection at the end and you get your money. We are going to see significant drawdowns. I predict about €94 million worth of drawdowns this year. People have been trying to be critical of the scheme, saying there have been only 300 or 400 grants drawn down. No one pays a grant for works that are not done. If that is what Deputy Gould's colleague sitting beside him is suggesting, I would like to know, but the grant is working. People are responding to it.

We need local authorities to do more on vacancy. Senator Cummins earlier mentioned the repair and leasing scheme. There are some magnificent schemes across the country. In Waterford, St. Joseph's House has seen 71 homes delivered, and we could give the committee loads-----

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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To be fair to Waterford, it is the outlier. It does great work-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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No, it is not just Waterford. Anyway, I know the Deputy is out of time.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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To be fair, if you look at the rest of the local authorities, it is not happening.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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No, that is not correct.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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What people tell me is that it might be possible in Waterford but it does not make financial sense in other cities.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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It does.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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That is what the local authorities are saying.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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They are not really saying that. That is what Deputy Gould is saying.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I think Deputy Flaherty is stuck in the Dáil Chamber for the moment. Deputy Gould's story about the butchers which is now three homes is one of the successful ones. Did the owner avail of any grants or a vacant homes officer or that kind of stuff or the change of use-----

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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There was the 7% levy once it started being levied.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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The stick was enough. Did he avail of the repair and leasing scheme or the assistance of a vacant homes officer? He also had the option not to apply for planning permission. Was that-----

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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He might have, but this is going back two years now, so it was about the time the schemes were coming in. Maybe he accessed it afterwards, but the point was that once his property was put on the register and the levy applied, it was the incentive for him to do the work. The thing about it was that he had a number of properties around Cork and other places. Financially, he did not need to do it. The value of the property kept going up, so he was just able to leave it sit there.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Fair play to him.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Yes. It is good to see that happening.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Sitting on empty profits is an odd way to do it.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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They are worth a lot more now and they are generating an income.

I will come back to Deputy Flaherty when he is finished his Dáil duties. The next slot is mine. Last night, when we were debating the planning Bill, it was all going really well until we got into major discussions about one-off rural housing and it descended into some strange, bizarre, entertaining, if you want to call it that, late-night discussions. I am looking at the latest figures from the Office of the Planning Regulator. The number of one-off houses in 2022 was approximately 7,000. It is about 40% of houses built. One of the questions I have is about the one-off rural housing guidelines. We have been waiting a considerable amount of time for them. Several Ministers now have been through that Department. Will the Minister of State give us an update on the current status of the one-off rural housing guidelines?

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Yes. They are really important guidelines. My officials are still working on them to bring them to a conclusion. We hope to have them as soon as physically possible. I have put out a call since taking office over eight weeks ago so, again, I hope they will come before me within the next few weeks.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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They will then be issued as a section 28 ministerial guideline. Is that correct?

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Yes. That is correct.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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To listen to the discussion last night, you would think it was absolutely impossible to build a one-off rural house.

To clarify, the figures in the OPR are about one-off houses. They do not differentiate between one-off housing in rural and urban settings. I suspect most of them are in rural areas.

That is good. We will expect to have them issued. What is the approximate time for the issuing of those guidelines?

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I do not have an approximate time with me today but I certainly will follow up with the committee in that regard.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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It would be really helpful to provide clarity and guidance. The guidelines are there as guidance, rather than relying on anecdotal discussions which take place about the difficulty, or lack of difficulty as the figures suggest, on the delivery of one-off housing.

The Office of the Planning Regulator was probably one of the best things to happen in the planning system following the Mahon tribunal. We talked about the staffing levels in An Bord Pleanála going up to a full complement of board members making decisions. The trajectory is to have up to 300 staff by mid-2024. It probably should have always been in and around that level. There was a considerable workload in An Bord Pleanála. It is no wonder it fell back into backlog with such low staff numbers and other issues with the board. Is the Office of the Planning Regulator looking for more staff? Is its staff level about right? It does incredible research and provides very informative evidence-based publications. It also assists greatly in training local councillors who really are at the coalface when it comes to decision-making on development plans, local area plans and new plans which come under the planning Act. What is the status of the OPR at the moment?

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I have engaged with Mr. Niall Cussen on taking office. Like all Departments and sectors, especially within the construction sector and within local authorities, there is a competitive process to get skilled talent and graduates form the various universities that qualify these types of professionals. There is always a competition in a vacancy. We are looking to increase the number of planners within local authorities at present. To date, 66 out of 101 posts have been filled at local authority level and we are actively looking to fill the remaining vacancies. That is the same for the Office of the Planning Regulator and for other areas as well. I have talked to the Department of further and higher education as to how we can look at other third level universities and colleges to increase their intake and to ensure we have a steady pipeline of planners into the future.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I encourage the focus on that aspect. Planning is not an exact science. We all know that. It is our best guess of what we can try to put in place to deliver what is needed. It is very helpful when there is an organisation like the OPR which provides such good research on planning. It is a real shame to see the Office of the Planning Regulator being held up as the bogeyman of all things bad in planning and for it to be blamed all the time. All it does is uphold the legislation and guidelines we enact here in the Oireachtas and at local authority level. It does not have an agenda except to ensure we are doing what we set out to do. I see criticism of the EPA in the same way. It is very odd to see science being criticised when it does not suit people's narrative or agenda.

As for the tenant in situ scheme, a number of those really hardworking groups, which do so much work in the area of homelessness and the prevention of homelessness, said the tenant in situ scheme, if it was well resourced and well assisted, would be major; it was a major move by this Government. Can the Minister give us an update as to where the tenant in situ scheme is at the moment? There were two or three variations of it. Is it progressing well?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Last year, there were in excess of 1,800 homes purchased through the tenant in situ scheme. Approximately 97 homes were purchased through the cost-rental tenants in situ scheme. We launched that on 1 April, which is just more than a year ago. Other bids have been accepted or acquired under that. We have just below 100 tenants who have been able to purchase their home through the first home scheme, which has been great for them because they had some finances to be able to purchase the place where they live. We are continuing the tenant in situ scheme, the cost-rental tenant in situ scheme and the first home tenant purchase scheme through the course of this year. We have set a target of 1,500 homes this year. We exceeded the target last year, which was originally 200 homes for acquisition, because we wanted to focus on building, which we are focusing on. We are building more and we are bringing these into stock. The acquisition target this year is 1,500 units. We have approximately 2,200 various claims and queries in at present.

There is much greater consistency in the approach with the local authorities. At the start, there were transboundary issues but I have not come across any of them recently. If anyone does, please let my Department know because we have our own unit in the Department looking at that. Former chief executive of Kildare County Council, Mr. Peter Carey, is doing a super job to co-ordinate that work. Issues such as a mother and father with two kids living in a four-bedroom home are not a barrier to purchasing the homes. It might mean that tenant may not stay there forever and goes to another appropriate home but we would look at purchasing it to secure the tenancy. It is fair to say that, at the start, we needed to ensure there was a consistent approach. It has improved greatly. The scheme is working well and it will certainly continue for the rest of this year.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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As for the right to purchase, I cannot remember the name of that Bill on which we did pre-legislative scrutiny. What was it called?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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That is the residential tenancies. Recently, we wrote to the committee on the pre-legislative scrutiny side of this, which has been concluded.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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We concluded pre-legislative scrutiny and the Department submitted a report. I just-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Bill is nearly completed itself. We will be coming back before the committee.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Okay. We will make the space and time for Committee Stage because it is important legislation. I thank him for bringing it forward.

In my last minute, I have one final question. I have a Private Member's Bill on dereliction and the regeneration of buildings. An aspect of that Bill is around a one-stop shop. The Minister's colleague, Deputy Barry Cowen, was the one who drafted the original Bill which I took and improved a little, with his permission. It is to try to streamline the process in which people get their different certificates such as the accessibility certificate, the fire certificate and the conservation report, if necessary. Does the Minister believe there is scope for that to be introduced on a pilot basis somewhere? I know some people expressed concern it would lead to a reduction in standards but it does not have anything to do with that. It requires independent oversight. Similar to community-led housing, it may not produce a lot but if we were to trial it in some particular local authority, such as Cork which seems to have a lot of dereliction and vacancies, to see if-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I will let Minister of State, Deputy Malcolm Noonan, come in. The part B fire regulations have been important. That review started in 2011. It has just concluded, if you can believe that. I do not know whether the committee has looked at the final version of the review but there are significant changes which will make a big difference particularly to over-the-shop housing to ensure viability. I will let Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, speak.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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It is a worthwhile proposal. Through using the vacant homes officer in the local authorities, perhaps it could be given consideration on a pilot basis. I spoke earlier about having the different disciplines under the one roof in local authorities which would give them the opportunity to help those who purchase a property, are identifying a property or own a property to navigate through what can be a cumbersome process. It certainly has scope.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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The vacant homes officer would be the relevant people in place to provide that guidance. I foresee the difficulties as being that sideward way of people saying this is the way we have always done it. People are afraid to deviate from a standard and a way which is working. However, we should look at something that could be introduced on a pilot basis with an appropriate level of oversight and compliance checking to ensure it would be as stringent and that the same results would come out at the far end as if one went through the separate processes and the planning exemptions, which do not exist any more.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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Yes, absolutely. If you look around our smaller regional towns in particular, where you have 19th century buildings on main streets, the back burgage plots on those have immense potential for regeneration using modern methods of construction onto the backfill of a site. There is still huge untapped potential in our town centres that we are not realising so I think something like this absolutely has merit.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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It also fits into our national planning objectives of compact growth, as well as transport and climate action.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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Absolutely.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I call Deputy Cummins.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Chair for the promotion.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Sorry?

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I said thanks for the promotion. I was called "Deputy" rather than "Senator" but I will take it, thanks very much.

In relation to the cost-rental tenant in situ scheme, has the Minister come across any issues with regards to slowness in terms of processing structural reports? I understand it takes time to conclude a sale but where timelines are tight and you have a tenant's landlord who has not had an offer from the Housing Agency in terms of the price, the termination date is coming up and the Housing Agency states it cannot give an offer until they have a structural report conducted on it. In fairness to the landlord, I can understand why he or she may state that as he or she does not know what that offer is going to be and whether it will be far below what the landlord considers to be the value of the property, he or she therefore has served the valid notice of 12 months or whatever it is. Equally, I can see it from the other side where you have a tenant who potentially does not have somewhere to go. Is there a way of front-loading the offer where at least you know whether you are in the ballpark and whether there is a discussion to be had in that regard?

At the moment, I have one constituent where that is the case. No structural report has been conducted on the property and they are being told by the Housing Agency that while a structural engineer will carry it out, we do not know when. The termination notice date is fast approaching.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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To be honest, we have not come across too many, be it cost-rental tenant in situ or tenant in situ, once the landlord and tenant are in the process. The structural report is required because we are purchasing a-----

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I do not doubt that.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I did not expect cost-rental tenant in situ to be expansive enough to do thousands of them. We have had about 281 homes referred. The bidding process is relatively early in it. We had issues with some of it. These are properties in the main that are occupied by people above the social housing limits. The cost-rental net income limits apply as well. There have not been that many of them and I did not expect many. I have not come across a trend that this is an issue within the scheme.

We are not purchasing below market value but there has been a view that because councils are involved or the Housing Agency are involved they are trying to purchase it for less. We will get our valuation, the owner will get the valuation and it is worked through like a normal process. I have not seen that in particular.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I have sent it into the Housing Agency and we are trying to follow up on it. It is a particular case and if the landlord knew what the ballpark parameters of an offer was, the tenant would remain in the property subject to a negotiation either concluding or not as the case may be. At the moment, the landlord does not know whether he is coming or going in terms of an offer. He does not know whether it will be in the ballpark or not. There is a tenant stuck in the middle of all of that. I do not like to bring up individuals cases but-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I have not come across loads of them but if that one has gone back to the Housing Agency it is one we can certainly look at. Obviously, an offer may not have been made yet because of surveys being done but we can have a look at it certainly. I have not across that as a major issue, to be honest.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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We have the planning Bill coming in to the Seanad in a couple of weeks. In the context of log cabins or pods, there seems to be huge discrepancies across the country as to how local authorities view those. Some are favourably disposed, some are site-dependent and some are outright opposed entirely. What is our view and how can we ensure uniformity here? Obviously, modern methods are a faster delivery mechanism but if we have a planning system and local authorities that are not willing to move with the times in that space, we have problem.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Certainly, that speaks to the point around the need for proper consistency and alignment throughout all the planning process, at national, regional and local level. I think those are the inconsistencies that cause people who submit applications to be angered and it leads to increased frustration. Certainly, the Planning and Development Bill 2023 is looking to address that, especially around the guidelines and regulations that will be presented as a result. These types of inconsistencies lead to huge frustration and cost for applicants. We want to ensure we have a system that provides clarity, consistency and speed of decision-making.

At a local level, it is the local authority and the planners who, through their training, expertise and assessment and adhering to the guidelines at national, regional and local level through county development plans and local area plans, make the determination and adjudication on an individual basis. I am sure this committee has worked diligently over the last three years to present a planning Bill that is fit for purpose.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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Finally Minister, Deputy O'Brien, on the Croí Cónaithe cities fund mentioned in his opening statement and the 582 units in the context of that scheme, it is lower than what we would have hoped for in terms of the uptake of that scheme. I have two questions. Is there feedback from the sector as to why there is not more of an uptake? Is there capacity to interchange the Croí Cónaithe cities and cost-rental schemes where there is essentially a backstop put in place whereby if the unit does not sell that it can be done through cost rental instead? That is the difficulty in terms of securing funding if you are building an apartment scheme of 200 units and you have no guarantee that you are going to have purchasers, notwithstanding the excellent value that will be brought to it through Croí Cónaithe cities.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Senator Cummins is right. I am actually quite content so far that we have schemes off the ground. If you take Blackrock Villas in Cork city, there are 274 units in that one development alone. That is the largest private sector apartment development in Cork city in over a decade.

Over the five schemes, we have 582 units. A further seven proposals are with the Housing Agency for assessment for another 621 units. We are actually very close to putting out a third call and to speak directly to what the Senator has been saying, we have looked at it and like any new scheme, you look at and put it out to see what the interest is. We have actually engaged with the development sector, including Home Building Finance Ireland, HBFI, on this, and have undertaken a review of the scheme.

There are a number of possible adjustments we will make in relation to backstopping that. We want these for purchase as well.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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Yes.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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But I understand. Many people have not sold apartments individually in a long time.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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Exactly.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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That is the reason we did this. Some people call this a bailout for developers.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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No.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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It is total nonsense. I am assuming in Cork city those 274 apartments are ones that will be welcomed by most people. First-time buyers are going to be able to-----

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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For sure. I am thinking forward to the North Quays-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Exactly.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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-----which the Minister has visited. That is in for planning now with Harcourt Developments. There will be 350 apartments right on the river front.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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It will be brilliant.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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The developer is open to doing them for purchase, but obviously funding is the key piece there, so that backstop is important.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I am sorry - I should have said we are going to put out the next call on Croí Cónaithe cities in the summer, so it is literally weeks away. We have reviewed and we are revising it. We have reviewed that with stakeholders as well, because I want people to be able to buy apartments in their cities, as the Senator does.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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How long will that call be open?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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We are planning to do about four a year, so this will not be just a one-and-done. The first one was very much for that, to see what the interest is. There is interest. We have five approved with seven under consideration with the Housing Agency. The next one will be open in the summer. We expect to put a call out every quarter.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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Could we keep it open? I am just conscious that we are probably eight weeks away from Harcourt getting planning permission-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I do not want to talk about a specific development.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I am just mentioning the development partner that is in for planning permission in the case of the North Quays project. We do not want a situation where it, or its equivalent in another location, misses three months just because we do not have it open at a particular point.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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There will be a lot of interest in the next call. We will want to assess the interest that is there. It will be well publicised and people will be able to apply to it. We will be looking at having a number of calls each year.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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The question then is whether someone will be able to put forward a proposal that is in the planning system.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Generally speaking, they would have to have planning.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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The North Quays is an SDZ, as the Minister knows.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Yes, but what I am saying to the Senator is I do not want to talk about a specific one because it is in planning at the moment. The Croí Cónaithe cities fund and offering there has been reviewed, is being revised and we will put it out in another call over the summer, in the next few weeks.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Cathaoirleach.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I want to raise a couple issues from the Housing Commission's report. There is a lot of depth to the report, but the most significant aspect of it is the issue of the housing deficit. When one reads the chapter it is not about the size of the deficit. The Minister will know the commission talks of a deficit of somewhere between 212,000 and 256,000 homes. The commission is very critical of the methodology that was given to the ESRI to produce the original study that underpinned the targets in the Minister's housing plan. This has been debated before, but it is very interesting it is confirmed in black and white in the Housing Commission's report. That very good piece of ESRI work only looked at new household formation from within the existing population and inward migration to work out what the new housing need would be year on year. The ESRI was not allowed look at unmet demand, pent-up demand or what the Housing Commission called "the deficit". Obviously the ESRI has been working since the end of last year on an updated study from its 2019-20 study. My understanding is the methodology for that was to be the same as the previous one. When the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, was in front of the committee discussing the HNDA, I asked him if there was going to be an allowance by the Department to change the methodology informing the ESRI report to include unmet demand. Then it would not just deal with new household formation and inward migration, but also the deficit. This is no criticism of the ESRI because it is ultimately the Department that sets the parameters and pays for the research, but if it does not include unmet demand it is not going to the be able to capture what the Housing Commission has captured, namely, the demand existing within the system. My first question is therefore whether the methodology underpinning the ESRI report is the same as in 2019 or has the Minister changed it to include unmet demand.

The second question relates to the other really significant recommendation the commission has highlighted. This is the idea that there needs to be "a targeted increase in the proportion of social and cost-rental housing to 20% of the national stock". Social housing is currently just around 10% and cost rental has been very marginal so does not really impact on the overall stock. To move to a situation where 20% of the stock would be social and cost rental, we would probably have to double the output, on current figures. If we were to move, along the trajectory of the commission’s report, up to 70,000 homes at that peak of the deficit, much more than that would be needed. In addition to confirming whether the methodology of the ESRI report has been changed, is the Minister also seriously considering the scale of increase in social and affordable homes the commission is recommending? That would mean when he publishes his revised figures in the autumn it will not just be about the quantum, but also about the distribution within the tenures.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy. First of all, we have the Housing Commission report and I thank its members for that. They have given a view and have obviously put significant work into the report. We will take their projections as well, because there was unmet demand, unquestionably. I said that from the day I took over as Minister we were dealing with ten very significant years of undersupply, so there is a pent-up demand that is there. It is previously unmet demand that needs to be met. As for the ESRI work, it has been asked to look at unmet demand. We are not just going to take the ESRI report. The methodology is important, certainly. With the commission's report and the ESRI report, the Government will decide what the revised targets will be. We will do that in the autumn, as I have said, and they will run to 2030.

The recommendation of 20% of national stock was discussed as well. I am aware the commission's recommendation is that 20% of the overall housing stock, as it is now, should be social and affordable. We will move towards that. We have changed Part V provision. That is for new developments. That was a significant step because it changes it going forward to the 20% provision in new developments between social and affordable. Let us look at housing output last year. If we park the unmet demand for a moment, there were 8,100-plus new-build social homes last year, out of a total housing delivery of about 33,000. Add the affordable and cost rental homes on top and we are well above 20%. That is just in one year. The previous year we would have been the same, but we have to catch up. To answer the Deputy's question directly, in the revised housing target we set going forward to the end of 2030 we will be looking across tenure at provision of what we need for affordable and for social. We have not constrained the ESRI in the work it is doing. The Deputy mentioned that yesterday in the Dáil. When we get the detail, we have obviously got the CSO detail which the ESRI has gone through. We will go through the Housing Commission detail as well. We will sit down in a very structured and informed way then and set forward the revised targets, which will be published in the autumn.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I have two supplementary questions. The last ESRI report did not examine or estimate what unmet demand was. That was not a part of the report. My question is a very specific one, namely, in the report it is currently doing, is the ESRI being asked, in addition to headship and migration, to produce its own estimate of the housing deficit because-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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No, we are going to do that. It does not really matter what the ESRI has been asked in that regard because we are going to include it.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Let me finish the question, because there is a reason it is important. What the Minister is saying is that the ESRI is not going to be asked to do that in the report.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy should finish and then I will come in. Go on.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I am asking whether the ESRI report will include its estimation of unmet demand or the deficit. The answer will be either a "Yes" or a "No". The second thing is, just to be very clear, in order to reach 20% of total housing stock being social and affordable or affordable rental, we would not need to be producing 20% of all new builds each year.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I know that.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It would need to be at least 50%. It would therefore be a quantum shift in the overall output.

The NDP included a commitment to provide around 10,000 social homes, and cost-rental housing will add a few thousand to that figure. The scale of that change would also mean the capital ceilings in the national development programme would have to change. This would mean increasing targets and would also have a significant impact on the capital ceilings and capital funding for the Department. Will the Department have discussions with the Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform to assess the impact of that before it publishes its targets? It is not just about setting a hard target; it would be a quantum leap in terms of State expenditure, and one I would welcome.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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It is fully understood that if one were to reach 20% of national housing stock, which is one of the recommendations the Housing Commission made, it would mean a serious acceleration of that delivery. We are assessing and examining each of the commission's recommendations. I was putting on the record what we are currently doing. I have recognised that previous unmet demand, particularly around social and affordable housing. We need to further scale up in that regard. I contend, and Deputy Ó Broin disagrees, which is fair enough, that we have made a significant step change in that delivery.

To answer the Deputy's question with regard to increased targets, if the target for housing output were increased to 50,000, for example - I am just picking a figure and no one has settled on that one - it would require increased State investment. It would also require increased private investment and that, too, needs to be looked at. I do not think any of us disagree that there is an absolute need for private investment to deliver the homes we need as well. The State cannot and should not do all of it. To answer Deputy Ó Broin's question directly, the criteria that were set for the ESRI by officials with regard to its work are unchanged from the previous criteria. This is important.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Sure.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I and the Government will ensure that previous unmet demand will be taken into account when we are setting the targets. It will not be the ESRI or the Housing Commission that will set the targets. That will be a Government decision around the revisions and we will include, and make more than reference to, previous unmet demand, as I have done since the day I took over as Minister in 2020.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I have one final comment and question. The Department's current plan and targets never took into account that demand. That is the entire problem. They were based on an ESRI report that did not include it.

My final question is on the bar chart on page 30 of the Housing Commission's report, which sets out the deficit separate from the baseline of the ESRI. The import of the Housing Commission's report is that a very large portion of that deficit is social and affordable housing - cost-rental in the commission's view. Is that something the Minister accepts at this stage?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I have not accepted any of the recommendations. We have not examined them in full.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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My apologies. It is the analysis. Does the Minister accept the analysis?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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What I have always said I would do with the Housing Commission analysis, particularly around the important matter of housing targets over ten years, is that we would look at that report in conjunction with the ESRI report. When the latter comes in, both reports will be looked at in conjunction and we will then make an assessment ourselves. I am not disputing anything that has been said, nor am I saying the report is absolutely correct either. We are examining it.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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The next two contributors are Deputy Gould and Deputy O'Callaghan. If they could be as direct and brief as possible, we will have a break and then move to discussing the Estimates, if that is okay with everybody.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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Last week, I was contacted by a lady who received notification last week from Cork City Council that there was no emergency accommodation available. The advice was to overstay or find somewhere else to stay in the short term. We now have a crisis. In the first three months of this year, 544 notices to quit were issued in Cork. The tenant in situ scheme has addressed part of that, which is welcome, but it is only a fraction of the 544 notices to quit. We do not have the figures for the next number of months but the current situation in Cork is that there is no emergency accommodation available or, if there is, it is under tremendous pressure. What action is being taken to support Cork City Council and people who are entering homelessness? This all goes back to people not having security of tenure. Some of these cases involve families where one or both parents are working. When people became homeless before, it was often thought it involved the most vulnerable. Now, we see right across all demographics that people are becoming homeless. What additional work is the Department doing to support these people?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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We have told the housing authorities that there is sufficient emergency accommodation available. If the Deputy has a case where an individual-----

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I have a letter.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I would like to see that letter. I am trying to be helpful here. This has never been flagged. I have met with the urban local authorities and the National Homeless Action Committee, on which the local authorities also sit. We regularly discuss and review the provision of emergency accommodation. It has never been brought to my attention, particularly of late, that there is any shortage of emergency accommodation in Cork City. I will be quick and I will try to be helpful here. If Deputy Gould gives me a copy of that letter, I will raise the case with the relevant-----

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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On another issue related to-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I was about to answer the Deputy's question on acquisitions, if that is useful to him. We are looking at a total of 109 acquisitions in the Cork city area alone in 2023. We are going to continue with this. Cork county had 74 acquisitions, giving a total of 183 in 2023.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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That is acquisitions.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Yes. As the Deputy knows, we will discuss the Estimates shortly. We have provided €242 million for the provision of emergency accommodation and services. As I have said, if we require more funding, we will get more for this year. Our big focus is on additional supply, as I mentioned earlier to the colleagues seated beside Deputy Gould, and we brought in additional supply, particularly in the last quarter. I met with Cork City council, specifically the chief executive and head of housing, and all the urban local authorities to discuss the need to accelerate the exits of people from emergency accommodation and into social housing, and we are doing that.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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Cork County Council is refusing to put a lady into emergency accommodation because she lost her tenancy through addiction. It turns out that she had been abused by her partner. He has since gone into prison and she has gone into recovery. She is a year into recovery and is trying to get her two children back. She cannot get them back because Cork County Council is refusing to put her into emergency accommodation. That is a disgrace. I wrote to the acting chief executive a few weeks ago and last week I wrote to the chief executive and head of housing at Cork County Council. It is disgraceful that a person who is in recovery and is trying to get her two children back is being prevented from doing so. She cannot get housed by her local authority. This is not the first case. When people are in recovery, they should be able to access emergency accommodation.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Every case is different. I chaired the North Dublin Regional Drug and Alcohol Task Force for ten years, and I have dealt with people who are in addiction. There are difficulties that addiction can pose to people's own lives, their housing situation and so on. There is no question that anyone who is suffering from addiction or going through addiction services and support should never be discriminated against by any housing authority. I do not know the details of the case and whether the person Deputy Gould speaks of was on a housing list already.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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People who are in recovery should be supported by their local authority, especially when it is a battle every day to stay in recovery. This woman is trying to access her children.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Is the person on the housing list?

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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She had a house and lost it because of her situation.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Is she on the housing list?

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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She has applied now but it could take up to six months.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Rather than hold up the meeting with this specific case, if Deputy Gould provides us with the details, I will be happy to look at them.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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My point is that if the Minister were to direct local authorities to work with people who are in recovery-----

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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There are liaison welfare officers in each of the local authorities who work with individuals who are at their most vulnerable.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I will take that up and will tell the woman in question that I raised this case today. I will look at the response. If I have to contact the Minister-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy can contact me.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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In a seven- or eight-week period at the start of this year, 31,000 bids were made on 145 properties in Cork city and county.

That goes to show the level of the housing crisis in Cork.

People contact me at 12.05 a.m. every Thursday. The houses come up at midnight. People send me messages or emails, which is fine. People are desperate and are logging on at 12.01 a.m. There were 31,000 applications.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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That could not be the case. There are not that many on the housing list in Cork at the moment.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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Unfortunately, Senator Cummins might not know. I will explain how it works.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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Leave it to Deputy Gould. Please finish your point, Deputy.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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People bid every week so it is not 31,000 people but 31,000 bids. People are bidding on properties every week and not getting them. Some 145 units received 31,000 bids. The crisis in Cork is unbelievable.

The Minster talks about targets but his targets are unrealistic and are not meeting the level of demand. I will make a suggestion that I have made numerous times to Cork City Council and Cork County Council. The level of delivery must outstrip the amount of new people and families who are coming onto the list. Roughly 1,000 people and families are coming onto the Cork City Council list every year and if we are not delivering 1,000 properties or more, the list is getting longer.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Saying that does not build the homes. We had ten years of undersupply. We have brought forward a new plan that we are funding on a multi-annual basis. We have built 110,000 homes since 2020 even through a pandemic, two construction shutdowns and a war in Ukraine. We are building the most social homes since 1975. Of course, we want to, and will, do more. However, the Deputy says that 1,000 people need social homes so we should just build them. Of course we should, but it is not going to be done overnight.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister is saying that for 13 years when Fine Gael was in government, its housing policy-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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No, I am not. This is a committee meeting.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister said nothing was built for ten years. Those were the Minister's words. He said there were ten years of undersupply. There were ten years of Fine Gael undersupply.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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The Deputy knows well what happened with the construction sector.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Deputy Gould wants to come in and get a soundbite. We have been trying to go through Housing for All and to look at the various initiatives. People have different views about what is working and some people might believe that some aspects are not working. I can get into a back and forth on the politics with the Deputy. I could ask why Sinn Féin does not have a housing alternative. However, I do not want to hold up the meeting because it is not about that. The Deputy has not produced anything to tell us what Sinn Féin can do.

We can see what is being done. One only has to drive around the country to see the new developments. Do we want to accelerate that? Of course we do, and we are doing so. The Deputy cannot just ignore what is happening out there.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I am conscious of the time limits.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy and I can go back and forth as often as he wants.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I have two questions. I support the roll-out of cost rental but in Cork, 32 properties were available for cost rental and 900 people applied. That means 868 people or families did not get a property. Every week, people are devastated because they cannot get cost rental, affordable or social housing.

There is a problem in Cork with Uisce Éireann's inability to deliver clean water to the people.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I will call to a halt to Deputy Gould's contribution. Representatives of Uisce Éireann will be before the committee next week and the Deputy can put that question to them.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I ask the Minister to take up the matter.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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I earlier raised a point about exits from homelessness. The quarterly report published by the Dublin Region Homeless Executive, DRHE-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Will the Deputy repeat that? I missed it.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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The quarterly reports by the DRHE provide more than the number of exits into secure housing tenancies. The reports on local authority homeless performance published by the Department give a detailed breakdown of exits from homelessness and show that a considerable number of people do not move into secure housing tenancies but back into precarious situations. I am sure the Minister is familiar with those reports published by his Department.

Some 317 posts have been approved for An Bord Pleanála and only 267 posts have been filled. When will all 317 posts be filled? As the Minister has referenced, there are shortages across the planning system, in the public sector, local authorities, the Office of the Planning Regulator, in the semi-State sector, where planners are required, and in the private sector. We were told earlier about the pipeline and the work that is being done to try to increase the numbers coming out of educational courses. That is welcome but more needs to be done. Are planners going to be put on the critical skills list? Countries such as New Zealand and South Africa have similar planning systems to ours. We could be getting planners from those countries if the profession were to be put on the list. Why has that not been done, given the shortage of planners is holding up critically needed housing and infrastructure?

There is also an issue for planners coming from the UK. Regardless of their experience, they go onto the lowest possible point of the pay scale. Someone who has ten years' experience should be pushed up a few points on the scale. Why has that not been addressed? It is blocking recruitment. There is a problem in local authorities. Perhaps An Bord Pleanála has taken planners and left local authorities short. Those are two things that could be done to assist now, as well as the important work of getting more people through relevant courses. Will those steps be taken? Why have they not been taken? When do we think we can get An Bord Pleanála up to the level of approved posts?

I have a second set of questions on a particular theme but we can start with those I have asked.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I will deal with the homeless question and the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, will deal with the board, to which I made reference earlier.

I mentioned homelessness in my opening statement and the Deputy asked about exits from homelessness. The exits we track are into tenancies. I want to be clear on that point. The exit may be to a housing assistance payment, HAP, tenancy, an approved housing body, AHB, tenancy or a local authority, LA, tenancy. People who leave emergency accommodation and go home to their folks, which sometimes happens, are no longer in emergency accommodation. We track the exits that we can through the DRHE and quarterly reports. Deputy Ó Broin can shake his head all he wants. He can have a look at the situation and come back to me next week. We track exits into tenancies. I will let the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, deal with the matter of the board.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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The homeless performance reports that the Department publishes-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I am saying that the exits we track and that I publish are exits into tenancies.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Does that include in the local authority homeless performance reports published by the Department?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The quarterly reports that are published show exits into tenancies.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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They are not in the Department's-----

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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That is absolutely the case.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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I will print off a copy of a report and show it to the Minister the next time I see him.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Does the Deputy look at the quarterly reports?

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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I do.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The exits that we track and publish are exits into tenancies.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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That is not the case in respect of the local authority homeless performance reports.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I have said it and have been clear. The Deputy was disputing the point earlier and I have clarified the situation. Does Deputy Ó Broin find homelessness funny?

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Our Department is developing a ministerial action plan on planning resources which, to the Deputy's point, responds to the capacity challenges in the planning sector. A steering group led by the Department has been established. It will co-ordinate and provide oversight to the action plan. As we said, it will comprise representatives from the local government sector, the Office of the Planning Regulator, the Department of further and higher education, a construction and green skills unit, and the third level sector. It is important that the steering committee is in place. There will be a series of meetings to address the individual and grouped actions as part of it.

The Deputy asked about the Office of the Planning Regulator. There are 45 fully funded and sanctioned positions to be filled. The Deputy referenced An Bord Pleanála. The number of people working on the board is higher than any previous time. This Government is determined to ensure that an coimisiún pleanála will work. Some 265 people, including board members, are now working there.

We hope to enable sanctioned staffing levels to increase to more than 300 people, and 15 decision-making board members will be maintained. We have increased funding. The Exchequer allocation was €33.9 million for 2024, which is an increase of €6.5 million, which includes €1.5 million in capital allocation and, therefore, we really want to ensure that we have speedy decision-making within An Bord Pleanála. We are also allocating the necessary resources in that regard.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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On the steering group that is examining the resourcing of planners, is the Irish Planning Institute, which represents the professional planners in both the public and private sectors, represented on that steering group?

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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It is interdepartmental.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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It is interdepartmental. Will that steering group engage with them?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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We engage with stakeholders all the time.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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They will, therefore, be engaging with them.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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They will.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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There is no issue.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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On a separate theme, we talked earlier about the need for private investment, which I certainly agree with. We need plenty of private and other forms of investment in the housing sector. I think the Ministers will agree on that. I have a strong view on how that private investment is channelled into what types of housing.

One issue that is brought up by constituents consistently, particularly in the Dublin area and in Dublin city more so, is that more and more new housing is apartments as we move towards compact growth. What comes up a lot of the time is that people say new apartments are being built in their community, which is fine, and they welcome that, but the real frustration is that they are not able to buy the apartments because they are rental only. It comes up consistently. I often meet couples in a family-sized home who have lived there all their lives and who absolutely want to stay there, and I fully respect that. Then, I also meet couples who might be in a similar situation and say they no longer want to be in the family-sized home and would like to move to one of the new apartments. However, there is no way they are going to sell up and leave the security of homeownership to pay high rent. This is something I have raised a good bit. I tabled amendments to the Planning and Development Bill 2023 that were not accepted. However, is this something that is going to be addressed? Yes, we need private funding, but can that be channelled in a way that does not mean it is all rental-only and that there are options? As the Minister knows, we are getting smaller household sizes. That is the way the demographics are going. Smaller household sizes should be able to have homeownership as well. It should not just be larger family sizes where that is an option.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I am not going to go into the politics of this. Thankfully, we are seeing just short of 600 first-time buyers buying homes every week, so I will leave that where it is. The Deputy made the point, though, with regard to apartment development and the channelling of investment where we need it. We need investment to back the building and funding of housing estates and multi-unit developments. It is acutely so with regard to apartment delivery. That is why we have particularly used the LDA and AHBs through Project Tosaigh to advance the delivery of cost-rental homes, particularly on the apartments side. Griffin Point in the Deputy's constituency is an example. He will see 402 apartments under construction right now and nearing completion, and 50% of them are cost-rental and 50% are social. Cost-rental is not purchase, but 70 are tenures there.

We discussed the piece earlier around Croí Cónaithe cities and the next call. That is the assistance we are giving to allow people, and we can use the first home and help-to-buy schemes with that, to buy apartments that are being built for homeowners in our cities in particular. The first batch of them are being built right now, and approval for seven more is being assessed. We are going to put out an additional call over the summer. We need to have a scheme like that because it is incredibly difficult to fund apartment building right now for purchase. That is why the State has had to step in.

The other point I will make to the Deputy is about where we have a real issue. I had a housing meeting a couple of weeks ago in my constituency with more than 200 people at it. Many people want to see what options are there. They raised queries and issues, one of which was the view with regard to bulk purchasing whereby homes were being purchased because of, let us say, the two recent cases that were mentioned. Everyone knows we have changed the planning laws since 2021. I will be bringing a memo to Cabinet next week, which will provide an update on how many permissions on houses and duplexes have been protected by the ban on bulk purchasing because in the planning conditions now, they are up for single sale only. It is between 50,000 and 60,000.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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I was asking about apartments.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Yes, apartments are tricky. Now, the Croí Cónaithe city scheme is there. I answered that earlier. I do want apartments for purchase to be available. We have seen some in my constituency recently as well. We have apartment developments in Swords and Malahide that are for purchase. It is not, therefore, correct to say that every apartment development that is out there is for rent. There is a real opportunity. There were a lot of build-to-rent apartments. We are moving towards build to cost rental. Griffin Point is a case in point. Another couple of very significant apartment developments are partnering with the AHBs now as well. We are also now seeing apartment developments of hundreds of apartments in specific developments in the Deputy's area. There is one very close to where he is that will be 50% cost-rental and 50% social housing. I would like to see more for purchase, however. That is why we brought forward the Croí Cónaithe city scheme. We have reviewed the first call of it. We have revised the scheme and we will be going out on a new call on that in the summer, and they are for purchase only.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I thank Deputy O'Callaghan. Deputy Ó Broin has the final slot and then we will take a break.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Before I go into this question, would be possible for one of the Minister's officials to draft a short briefing note for the committee on a very technical aspect of the affordable housing fund legislation? I refer to the long backstop and what I call the 40-year rule, which is one of the conditions under which the local authorities can seek the full repayment of the equity. I am not going to ask the Minister to talk us through it now, but there is a little bit of ambiguity and concern around how that may be applied. We would like somebody to drop the committee a note.

I have questions on the funding of homeless services. They do not relate the Peter McVerry Trust. Although there is a little bit of context, they are specifically to do with other issues. Obviously, homeless services have for some time been funded through what many of us call the deficit model. Therefore, up to 90% of the funding is provided by the Exchequer and then own fundraising is brought to fill in the gap. The information in the public domain, and it is only reporting, has suggested that one of the problems in the Peter McVerry Trust is an overreliance on deficit funding, which in some cases is somewhere in the region of just 70% of Exchequer funding and then they start dipping into capital funding to cover current expenditure. Obviously, we will have to wait until we see the independent reports. We will question the trust, Department officials and others at that stage. What I want to raise is correspondence the Minister has been receiving since 2020 from the four principal homeless service providers, namely, Dublin Simon Community, Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, Focus Ireland and Crosscare. As he knows, they wrote to him in October 2020 highlighting a series of concerns around the section 10 funding model and seeking a review of that funding. He wrote back to them and then they wrote to him again on 23 December 202. In their letter to the Minister, they stated:

It is crucial to understand that homeless services are and have been operating at funding deficits for some substantial time [This is the current expenditure deficits]. Organisations like ourselves have been subventing the provision of partially funded services operating at deficits from both fundraised income and our own resources. This is clearly an unsustainable position. We understand how the review of homeless services could address these issues and we are committed to engage with you in this regard.

They then made a detailed submission to the Minister's Department in November 2021, and there was further correspondence in 2022. I understand some of the Minister's officials and those from the organisations met consistently over a period of approximately two years. However, it is my understanding that review, particularly the review of section 10 funding and deficit funding, did not commence prior to the public revelations around the Peter McVerry Trust. Obviously, a review has been initiated since then. It is highly likely that if that review had been initiated when the four homeless service providers requested it, that is, if it had happened in 2021 and 2022, the very serious issues at Peter McVerry Trust would have come to light. That is just a summation.

Can the Minister explain why that review did not take place relatively soon after the homeless service providers requested it? As I said, they requested it at the end of 2020. Some of the language in their letters is quite alarming. Obviously, these organisations are bringing that concern to his direct attention in correspondence to him to try to have the matter resolved. Can he give us an indication of where the review of section 10 funding, which I understand is happening, is at? It seems remarkable that when the four largest organisations in the country were calling for a review that was dealing with one of the very problems that caused difficulty in Peter McVerry Trust, that review was not in fact conducted, certainly not within a two-year period from the initial request.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Deputy Ó Broin. In that intervening period, we did give it additional funding. I discussed this at the NHAC and I was the one who approved that we would go ahead and do the review because I wanted it done with regard to the section 10 funding. They wrote to me and we discussed it on the margins of meetings. The CCMA review of section 10 funding is ongoing and we are awaiting recommendations. I would not think it is fair-----

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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May I ask when did it start? When did the review commence?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Terms of reference were agreed in 2022. I will get Deputy Ó Broin the exact dates, but I believe the review was in 2023. It was before the revelations to which Deputy Ó Broin has referred. It was not in reaction to that at all. Some of the organisations Deputy Ó Broin has referenced will tell you that I discussed it directly with them on the margins of meetings and gave a commitment we would get the review going. Terms of reference had to be agreed and a working group had to be put together. Good and significant work has been done because there is the deficit of funding that is an issue. I will not stray into other issues. Corporate governance is important, as is financial management. We will await the report, as Deputy Ó Broin has said. The review commenced in 2023 but work was being done in 2022 on the terms of reference. It was being done by the Department officials with these organisations. The officials and the organisations meet regularly. The organisations Deputy Ó Broin mentioned sit on the NHAC and we meet them regularly. It is matter that is discussed on the margins of meetings also.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Again, I also do not want to stray into the Peter McVerry Trust issues at this time. It would be very helpful if the officials were able to provide the committee with a note as to when the terms of reference were agreed. If the Minister could share the terms of reference with us, it would be helpful. When did the review commence? Who is on it and when will it conclude? I certainly would like the committee to have some role in discussing the outcome of the review because it would be useful.

I know the Department is incredibly busy and the officials work very hard but I have had an opportunity to read the 2021 submission to the Department and the letters and there is real alarm in the correspondence received as far back as October 2020. The idea that it would take until some point in 2023 for the review to commence is concerning. I am not the only person who thinks this. If the Minister were able to give us a note with as much information as possible about the process, the committee could then discuss how we want to proceed with it.

There is an outstanding request from the committee to the Department for some documentation to be made available to us for our consideration on how we take forward the issue of the Peter McVerry Trust. There is some frustration that documentation the Minister has which he could share with us is not being shared. I appeal to the Minister to help the committee to do our job properly. We have behaved very responsibly with respect to the issue of the Peter McVerry Trust. We could have all played party politics with it and we chose not to do so. If the committee requests documentation, at a very minimum it should be provided.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I will deal with the Peter McVerry Trust issue in a moment. I do not think there is any difficulty in providing the committee with a timeframe. The terms of reference were agreed between the Department and those groups and we will just need to check with those groups whether it is okay with them to share the terms of reference. I am not sure until we talk to them but I do not expect there will be an issue.

The one thing not to forget is that in the period of time Deputy Ó Broin has mentioned, from 2020 onwards, we provided significant additional funding to those services. It is not as if we were doing nothing and we certainly were not. What we will also do in the letter to the committee is outline the increase in funding in that time.

With regard to any requests the committee has for documentation, where we can provide it we do so. I will review it again with the officials and see whether it is appropriate. I am referring directly to the Peter McVerry Trust issue. The committee will have an important role in it and I must say there has been an understanding in the committee, through the Cathaoirleach and all members, of the sensitivities around it. All of us want to ensure the services continue. Two reviews are ongoing. I will check what the request was, and if there is anything we can supply, there will not be a reason not to. I will speak to the officials after the meeting and we will revert very early next week on whether it is available or not available or something in the middle, if that is okay.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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That concludes the meeting on Housing for All. I remind the Minister and his officials of what has been requested. Senator Cummins asked for the figures for 2023 for the change in use to residential. Senator Boyhan raised the dashboard for progress and the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, referred to it. Deputy O'Callaghan asked for an update on the figures for the prevention of bulk-buying houses and duplexes. There is also a request for a note on the 40-year shared equity payback. There is also a request for the terms of reference document. I thank the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, the Ministers of State, Deputies Noonan and Dillon, and the officials for their attendance.