Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I think my time is limited as well. I am absolutely committed to social housing and house building. We will construct houses as soon as we can and are already exploring ways in which we can engage in some housing construction off the Government balance sheet. As soon as capital is available, I will be building houses in conjunction with the local authorities. I want to make that quite clear.

There is an obligation under the 2009 Act. There are social housing regulations, commenced on 1 May 2011, that local authorities must take into account when making their allocation schemes. All housing authorities were required to make an allocation scheme under these regulations. They must set out the manner in which they will allocate dwellings to households on the waiting list and households that have been approved for transfers. On the basis of the discussion to date in this House - and I have listened to what all of the Deputies have said - I will be asking my officials to follow up with any local authority that is not complying with these statutory instructions. I will also remind them of their obligations to RAS tenants, because they do have obligations to these tenants who are losing their homes.

I intend to revise these regulations to ensure that all social housing recipients, including those in receipt of HAP who wish to do so, will still be able to access other local authority housing options through the transfer system, whereby they can apply to transfer to other social housing options such as local authority housing or approved housing body housing.

In respect of the point made by Deputy Coppinger, the debates from last week are in the official record. For clarification, I want it recorded that I am committed to putting in place the statutory framework under section 22 of the 2009 Act that will provide for a robust transfer policy in every local authority, which would afford HAP recipients and other social housing tenants equal opportunity to access other forms of social housing support, including incremental purchase schemes. While it is a transfer list, the list will reflect the specific priority or previous position that households had on the main waiting list within the authority area in which they are resident. They will, therefore, be placed on a transfer list with no less favourable terms than if they had remained on the main housing waiting list. They will keep their time accrued. That is more or less what I said last week, but I wanted to say it again very clearly. In response to Deputy O'Brien, when I go to the Seanad, I will be listening to any proposals made there. Today is not the end of the Bill. If there are amendments there, they will come back to this House.

I repeat that this is a positive measure. People come to see me who have an offer of a job and tell me that they cannot take it because they will lose all of their rent supplement. Those people will now be able to take the job and have some security with regard to being able to afford their rent. They will be able to keep their priority position on whatever local authority waiting list they are on, because I will put that in the regulations, which is the appropriate place to put it because that is where transfer regulations generally are under the 2009 Act. This Bill simply deals with the three issues - HAP, anti-social behaviour and tenant purchase. It sets up the HAP scheme, which is a major reform and improvement for people who are currently in an insecure situation whereby if they get work, they are in danger of losing their rent supplement.

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