Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

One interesting point made by the AHB group, the Housing Alliance, in its presentation this morning was that many young housing professionals tend to choose to work for AHBs rather than for the councils. That is a very interesting point. Staff in the council tend to be generalists whereas people who specialised in housing administration during their education tend to work for the AHBs. The other thing about the AHBs is that some of them are now incredibly large. It is very striking when one looks at an organisation like Clúid Housing or Co-operative Housing Ireland. These bodies may have 4,000, 5,000 or 6,000 tenancies. This means that they are bigger than, for example, Fingal County Council, one of the county councils in the area I represent. They have huge estates. The big lacuna in the Minister's administration over the last two years is that he has not brought forward the long-promised legislation to encompass and fully regulate the AHBs. We are still waiting on that. We were told that there were issues with the Charities Regulator and so forth, but we are still waiting. We have been promised this legislation for a long time. Even going back to a time when we had Fianna Fáil Ministers we were promised legislation specific to AHBs, which still has not been put in place. However, I generally believe that all tenancies should be registered, including by all organisations providing social housing. The thrust of the Bill is right in this case.

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