Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

When RAS was introduced, I found myself talking people into it because they had no prospect of being housed. Depending on their position on the list, they were required to be renting for 18 months. In many cases, I tried to match a tenant with a landlord to make the scheme work because it offered people some element of security in a rented house. The tenancies were usually for approximately five years. This allowed people to go to work. This Bill is positive in that it attempts to deal with this poverty trap.

As the provisions contained in this Bill were piloted by Limerick City Council, that authority will be most familiar with what the Minister of State wants from the legislation. She worked closely with Limerick City Council on the trial, which is not yet complete. The trial should have been allowed to conclude before we proceeded with the legislation. We should have engaged in pre-legislative scrutiny on the provisions in the Bill but the time available did not allow for that. The Joint Committee on the Environment, Community and Local Government held a number of hearings on the Bill, however, even if they did not constitute pre-legislative scrutiny. I understand why people outside the House might regard this as a spat between the Opposition and the Government but our concern centres on the intentions behind the Bill. As of 2013, some 44,300 rent supplement tenancies were transferred to rental accommodation schemes. We are speaking about a large number of people over and above the 90,000 who are on housing waiting lists. The housing waiting list is, therefore, substantially larger than 90,000 individuals or families. When officials from Limerick City Council appeared before the committee on 7 May, they stated:

The intention behind the formal scheme is that once households are supported by HAP they will be considered to have their housing needs met and will be removed from the housing waiting list. This is a fundamental change to overall housing policy where those in receipt of long-term rent supplement support remain on local authority waiting lists.

This statement is from the local authority which prepared the business case for these changes and which is leading on the new provisions. It is not simply an assertion from an Opposition Deputy. This is a fundamental shift in the way we deal with social housing. The private sector will predominantly be the providers of housing and payments will substitute for the prospect of a long-term home.

RAS is different from the HAP scheme in that under the former the landlord is paid 92% of the market rent. It is a discount but it relates to the market rent. The HAP scheme will be more rigid in that the level of payment will be set annually at a rent below the market rate. The number of landlords coming forward is likely to be lower than is the case with RAS. People are constantly dropping out of RAS. I dealt with one individual who was housed in RAS accommodation which the landlord is now selling. I can provide the name and address of this individual.

It is not a concoction but rather a firm case which occurred this week. The argument is there is an obligation to a participant in the rental accommodation scheme but the people affected were told there was no obligation and they needed private rented accommodation. As there was nothing to give them, they needed to apply for rent supplement. Others have similar stories. It does not matter what happens in theory, it is what happens in practice that matters. My concern about this Bill is that there is much in it that is good in theory but the element to make things happen in practice can be missing.

There are no houses to which people can be transferred. In addition to the 90,000 families on the waiting list there are a large number of people in the rental accommodation scheme, RAS. There will be new obligations applying to the housing assistance payment, HAP, as opposed to RAS, particularly with regard to the number of inspections that will happen. A delegation from Roscommon County Council indicated to a committee on 7 May the many issues that could pose difficulties in practice, including the number of inspections that must be made. With RAS there was one inspection at the start of a tenancy but it seems the inspection will now be an annual event. Authorities do not have the ability or numbers to make those inspections, which indicates there are many elements in practice that will not work.

As Deputy Ó Feargháil and I have said, there is no transfer list in Kildare and a person would just go to the bottom of a list if he or she goes off it for any reason, including not passing an assessment. Does this transfer list entitle people to go back on the list in the position they were when they were removed from the original list?

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