Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The first thing to say is that this is part of a suite of measures that we are working on to help people who are in emergency accommodation to get out of emergency accommodation and to help local authorities manage the social housing stock efficiently. There are more than 70,000 people waiting for their home. These homes are being built now and we want to make sure there are no unnecessary or unreasonable delays for those families to get into their homes. What we are talking about here are not refusals for legitimate reasons, as the Deputy said. That is not what we are talking about. There is great flexibility with the local authorities in terms of working with families and individuals to help them into their social housing homes and in terms of determining what is the best type of home for them. It is not for legitimate reasons. It is for reasons that are not seen to be acceptable by the authority which is responsible for helping families into homes and managing that stock of social housing. We are talking about three areas of choice where people can choose to have their home, and I can provide a detailed map of the geographic size of those areas for the Deputy. We are talking about a second refusal. The local authority has offered one house which it deems to be a perfectly good house for that person to move into but that has been refused. The local authority has then offered a second house which it deems to be perfectly good for that household to move into but that has been refused. In that instance, based on the feedback I have received from local authorities, they believe that rather than just a 12 month suspension, a five year suspension would be more suitable. We are not talking about a large number of cases so I do not know why the Deputy is getting so frustrated and concerned about this. The local authorities deem it necessary to ensure they can more efficiently use their housing stock in the interests of those people who have been waiting too long to get into their homes.

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