Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising the concerns of many people he represents very effectively in Drogheda. He rightly points out that rent pressure zone designation is assessed on the basis of local electoral areas. When local electoral area boundaries divide urban communities, as they do in certain parts of Drogheda, there are anomalies and consequences about which some people are not happy. Drogheda is unusual in terms of local electoral areas.

Issues arise in the town in which I live, Carrigaline, just outside Cork. They were raised by Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire during the week. Since the local electoral areas in the town are separated by the river, half the town is in and half the town is out. I have to have an assessment process that works on the basis of what is likely to be best for the vast majority of places. The most accurate way in which we could do that was to assess on the basis of local electoral areas.

We introduced the legislation before Christmas. Up until Christmas, we could assess on the basis of local authority areas. On that basis, there were only five local authorities in the country that actually qualified under the designation - the four Dublin ones and Cork city. We then looked in a much more granular and targeted way at local electoral areas within local authority areas to add significantly to the number of rent pressure zones that were going to qualify. The way it works is that the legislation states that the Housing Agency, in consultation with local authorities, can make recommendations to the Minister on areas that need further detailed assessment to determine whether they qualify. The agency recommended a series of areas that should be considered. On that basis, we designated 23 towns, or local electoral areas, as new rent pressure zones. They were announced last Thursday. They include Ballincollig-Carrigaline in County Cork, Celbridge-Leixlip, Naas and Kildare-Newbridge in County Kildare, Ashbourne, Laytown-Bettystown and Ratoath in Meath, Bray and Wicklow in County Wicklow, and all of Galway city. I can understand that there is frustration in towns that are close to these areas that do not qualify. We have to have, however, criteria that are independently assessed and not politically driven. They must be data driven. This involves the RTB working with the ESRI to obtain accurate data on the two criteria, which are that rents must be above the national average and must have been increasing by 7% or more annually in four of the past six quarters. We felt that was a reasonable balance that would be relatively easy to assess and understand. If it were made too complex, the assessment process would take too long and there would be further anomalies and so on.

We will re-examine Drogheda. At the end of each quarter, we need to assess again whether there are changing data for four of the preceding six quarters and whether the rent is above the national average. Towns such as Navan, big towns such as Drogheda and others may qualify in time but currently do not meet the necessary criteria. That is the only reason Drogheda has not been included to date.

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