Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate and compliment my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, for bringing forward this important piece of legislation, which deserves careful scrutiny and debate. With well over 100,000 of our fellow citizens languishing on housing lists across the country, it is incumbent on us all, in a non-partisan way, to set out in a focused and detailed manner how to tackle this important issue.

This is one of the key commitments to reform and it was announced by me in June 2011 with a policy statement prepared at the time. I salute the Minister of State, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, for bringing forward this legislation at this juncture, as it is critical in the context of the current housing position. I benefitted when my late parents were allocated a local authority house in 1960 and value the role of local authorities in ensuring the provision of proper and affordable housing to many thousands of families across the Irish landscape. Until the late 1970s we not only had to pay a rent, collected on a biweekly basis, but also had to twice yearly pay rates levied in July and December. I recall my late parents rearing two pigs to sell at the end of June through the late Matt Slevin, a pig dealer, with the money paid over in rates. For Christmas my late mother would rear turkeys, which were sold at the turkey show in Ballinacarriga. That was the second moiety, and Santa did not come into the equation because the rates had to be paid directly to the local authority.

That was for a rented house. We were not protesting about those charges. We were glad to have a roof over our heads, provided by the State and we acknowledged and valued it as such. We had to hand dig a trench 500 m to 600 m long in 1970 to bring down the water from the village as the house did not have a running water supply at the time. We harvested roof water prior to that for washing and carried water for domestic consumption from a private well situated across a neighbour’s field.

I am glad to have seen over the past 20 years the huge improvements in the provision and standard of local authority housing. It galled me that at a time of apparent plenty in the Celtic tiger years there was an effort to privatise or outsource the provision of accommodation for those on council housing lists. At a time when we should have launched a big programme of house building for local authorities we took it away from local authorities as if it was anathema to them to do that. This was done by way of various schemes. We spend over €500 million a year on rent supplement which creates its own problems. It made the private sector the de factosolution to the housing crisis. It was the antithesis of proper strategic planning by the State, which allowed a black hole open up and swallow a lot of money that could more profitably have been put into house-building. If even €1 billion a year had been spent on house building, it would have made a significant impact.

The policy of using the private sector must be reversed and the State should return to what is fundamental Labour Party policy, the construction of thousands of houses across the country, to replenish the housing stock and provide much needed employment in rural areas. This must be a central tenet of the review of social policy later this year. We are constrained by economic parameters and the need to achieve a debt-GDP ratio of 3% which circumscribes our ability to raise the necessary finance to undertake a significant house-building programme at this juncture. To get around this we must be innovative. We must reach out and encourage local authorities to set up companies, to make off balance sheet provision of financing. This must be explored seriously and new models of creative funding have to be considered to put this urgent house-building programme in place. Let us leave a real Labour Party legacy and policy mark on this pivotal role in the Department, by helping people who are unable to provide housing or accommodation from their own resources to do so.

I had also focused on housing supports, in particular the rent supplement scheme which was operated by the Department of Social Protection. Many organisations involved in social policy indicated this was contributing to a poverty or social welfare trap. It started out as a short-term support mechanism but is now a long-term one. People who took up work immediately lost the rent supplement. I was of the view that should not happen. I think the Minister of State is of the same view. To encourage people to take up work, one must not put obstacles or impediments in their way but instead facilitate that transition by continuing the payment for two or three years on a declining basis, much like the back-to-work allowance. That would encourage people to take up work. If people find their weekly calculations are in the negative, that would be an impediment on ordinary economic grounds.

I commenced a review of the rent support among other issues. I want to see local authorities become the repository for the administration of the rent supplement system. This is the thrust of the housing assistance payment proposal. It will be more equitable and efficient if it encourages that. I envisage landlords will receive their rent supplement directly from local authorities on condition they are tax compliant. This would eliminate the problem identified by many landlords whose tenants failed to hand over the rent supplement payment and fallen into arrears. In the past two weeks a landlord came to me because a tenant on rent supplement was in arrears for thousands of euro. That is not fair to the landlords, many of whom provide very important accommodation. We would be in an awful state if we did not have this level of accommodation available. I envisage that every three months the local authorities will send details of rent supplement they pay to landlords to the Revenue Commissioners. That is how it would work. They also have to protect tenants. It is a two-way street. Rent supplement should only be paid in respect of accommodation that is suitable and in a full and proper state of repair. This will create a more equal and fair social housing system. The local authority will be the overarching supervisor. Why have bits and pieces of housing provision all over the place? One had to go to the community welfare office to get one form stamped then back to the local authority to get another one stamped. One would want to be a lamplighter to keep that up.

There will also be a direct deduction of rental contributions due to local authorities from the welfare payments of HAP recipients and local authority tenants. This will help eliminate the build-up of rent arrears. The local authorities were resolute in their view that this would have to be central to the administration system and I note it has been included in the Bill.

The Bill also deals with several other areas in need of reform. Section 62 of the Housing Act 1966 was the legal mechanism by which local authorities repossessed houses from tenants fell foul of the European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003 where factual disputes arose concerning the reason for the evictions as sought. Part 2 of the Bill sets out new procedures for repossessing local authority dwellings where serious breaches of tenancy occur, which I am glad to say includes anti-social behaviour. Regrettably, this has become a very serious issue and has caused great misery and wrought great havoc for many people who have lived for years as part of a community in a housing estate and want peaceful and quiet enjoyment of their buildings without let or hinder or interruption. It is important to protect people who are law-abiding. There should be a remedy for people who do not obey the law to ensure the protection of the majority who pay their rent and are glad to have the house and a roof over their heads.

The new tenant purchase scheme was long awaited and Part 3 provides for an incremental purchase scheme for existing houses which covers local authority homes, apart from those captured by the Housing Act 2009. The Minister of State will deal with discounts, method of determining the purchase price and the period of the charging order. What other criteria for discounts does the Minister of State have in mind? The charge will be made in equal annual portions over the charge period. If the house is to be sold during the charge period by the tenant purchaser, the local authority will have first option to buy it back at the then prevailing market value, less what is owed in the incremental purchase scheme. It is important that the local authority has that opportunity.

A couple in Longford have contacted me frequently about a problem in the tenant purchase scheme. They have lived for 25 or 30 years in their house and want to buy but cannot get a loan from the local authority because they receive an invalidity pension. The purchase charge they would have to pay is less than their rent. The local authority is fully conversant with their situation and is aware of their ability to discharge the rent over the years and would readily facilitate them with a loan if it could do so, it is not permitted to do so. It goes to the Housing Agency for evaluation but the minute it sees that a person is in receipt of social welfare, it rejects the loan application.

The housing agencies are examining this problem. We cannot preclude people who live in a house from the possibility of buying it. It ignores people’s equity in the house when, after being tenants for 15 or 20 years, they would qualify for substantial discounts. It makes no sense and is discriminatory, especially when the tenants have a clean record for payment of rent over many years, without arrears or default. Surely all factors should be taken into account and evaluated in the assessment and determination process.

I could not believe what I read in a recent report that some local authority houses were vacant for a year or 14 months. I welcome the Minister of State’s recent announcement of additional funding which has been allocated to address the problem of council houses which have been vacant for a long time. This process must be speeded up because so many are languishing on the waiting lists. It also makes for good estate management and gets the stock back into operation and generates rental income for local authorities. There must be a streamlined approach to tackling the voids in each local authority. Very often, however, local authorities go overboard and do not allocate a house even when it is in substantially good repair. It might need painting or something else that a tenant will do. The local authorities want everything to be in pristine condition. It should be allocated if a tenant takes on the responsibility of painting it. If it is boarded up it stays that way for a long time and becomes a focus of anti-social behaviour. The faster it is turned around the better.

The level of rents, about which the Acting Chairman spoke eloquently and with more knowledge than I have, and the pace of the increases in recent times is causing significant problems. Notwithstanding legal issues which surround rent control, there must be a review of this issue, and at least the possibility of the linking of rents to the consumer price index would ensure that rents cannot be increased by more than the cost of living increases. Perhaps in this context we could examine what prevails in other European countries.

On the question of the housing adaptation grants, the funding for which is €35 million or thereabouts, I remember fighting tooth and nail to protect that when the troika appeared with all kinds of proposals to slash spending. This is something that is germane and is in my DNA. It is probably the most cost effective, efficient grant scheme operated by the Minister of State's Department. It represents outstanding value for money, has a very positive cost benefit analysis ratio and the impact upon the morale of the recipients who get an opportunity to stay within their own home and environment is incalculable. It saves a great deal of money for the State, considering the cost that would be incurred if somebody had to have recourse to a nursing home place, which would necessitate significant payments each week under the fair deal scheme. I urge that additional money be sought for this scheme as it plays a very important role in helping people stay in their own homes.

I congratulate the Minister of State on bringing forward the Bill and I look forward to seeing further improvements by way of Committee Stage amendments. The Minister of State should be open to considering various amendments because this is an issue that transcends politics. It is one in respect of which each and every one of us has a role to play in ensuring that our people are housed. It is something I feel we would almost elevate to a legal right, that of having a proper house and accommodation.

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