Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein)

I hope the measures the Minister is preparing for the local authorities will address the issues raised. It would be a tragedy if we end up with people on local authority housing lists and in receipt of rent subsidy because we cannot leave them in their homes. It is financially viable to leave them in their homes. Dublin City Council has debts of €40 million in respect of affordable housing. Other sections of Dublin City Council have other debts. I refer to the Keane report, which does not mention this source of housing. The Minister of State said he would provide some guidelines but we need to see how exactly it will be dealt with. We are supposed to see how to deal with private debt in the Keane report. How will we deal with local authority debt? If Dublin City Council's exposure is this high, what is the exposure of other local authorities? I do not have the figures but I hope to get them in the near future. Many people at the bottom end of the scale are affected by this. Some of them surrendered properties when they came off the housing list and took up shared ownership. They lost their homes and there is a great danger of homelessness. Moving people from shared ownership to rental subsidy and homelessness would be disastrous.

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