Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I have just emerged from 11 years as a councillor and am au faitwith the transfer and housing situation. Before one can even think of applying for a transfer one has to be in a house for two years. The reasons for the transfer would have to be serious anti-social behaviour, violence, overcrowding or some major health issue. One does not have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a transfer anywhere at the moment because the housing departments are inundated and their priority is to get people into houses rather than transfer people from one house to another.

The Minister of State was a bit unsure the last day we debated this Bill but has admitted today that people who go on to the HAP scheme will be knocked off the council housing list. Officials from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government confirmed this at the meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Environment, Community and Local Government. Those people will be council tenants but without the rights of other council tenants who have secure tenure. The Minister of State is right to say they will apply for a transfer because that is all they will be entitled to when they are regarded as being adequately housed. The Minister of State is creating a second tier, yellow pack council tenant.

I take exception to the Minister of State’s remark, one that I have heard from council housing officials, that many people are happy where they are and do not want a council house. The people I deal with would give their right arm for a council house. If somebody does not want a council house he or she will be offered two or three houses and will then be knocked off the list. They will not be offered another and will not get rent supplement. I do not know where these people are. Maybe the housing officials actually believe that people want this form of housing. They do not. Many people who would not have seen themselves living in a council house some years ago would now be happy to do so.

I was brought up in a council house that was built in the 1970s. It was a way of life for people who could not afford to buy on the open market. I am genuinely dismayed to see the Minister of State breaking with a tradition like that, as a member of the Labour Party. She shrugged when I said we cannot blame the Labour Party for what the Government inherited, the bailout, the lack of house-building under Fianna Fáil, who admitted as much earlier this evening, but we can blame the Minister of State for this. Her name is on it. It breaches an obligation and responsibility to provide council housing.

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