Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have mixed feelings about the Bill and the role the Government seems to see for the AHB sector in the delivery of social housing.

On the one hand, I do not doubt the contribution many AHBs make in the provision of social housing. Having met representatives of the AHBs at various committee meetings, I do not doubt the goodwill and bona fides of many, if not most, of those involved in the AHB sector in trying to provide for a social need, which, as we are all aware, is of great importance, given the scale and severity of the housing crisis. I do not want to be critical of the AHBs, nor do I oppose the principle that insofar as there is an approved housing body sector, it should be regulated. We should have streamlining, with consistency in standards, processes of registration, proper governance, oversight of the financial behaviour of these entities and so on. I see the logic in all that. However, I cannot help but feel that in the same way social housing generally is a response to the failure of the private market to provide affordable housing for many people on low and middle incomes, the AHB sector is a response to the failure of the State to provide public housing. It has to fill a gap left by the State's failure. I worry when I hear the Minister say he has great ambition for the approved housing body sector. That ambition seems to be growing at the expense of that for local authority housing - the direct provision of public housing by the Government and specifically the local authorities.

I have heard some of the approved housing bodies indicate that they think the burden placed on them by the Government because of its failure to deliver public housing on the scale necessary is one that is very difficult for them to shoulder. They do not really have the resources, scale and so on to deal with what the Government is trying to unload on them because of the failure of successive Governments to deliver public housing on the scale necessary via the local authorities. It is a form of outsourcing.

I am concerned that the Government hopes to deliver one third of the social housing units it hopes to deliver by 2021 via AHBs. I do not know how that compares historically with the proportions they have delivered in the history of the State and perhaps the Minister might enlighten me. Proportionately, it seems to be growing. There is a correlation between the Government's ambition for the sector and the State's retreat from providing the public housing on the scale needed to address the housing crisis.

With that comes the need for a new body which will cost a significant amount of money. Given that we are where we are, to use that horrible phrase, I can see that we need the regulator. However, it is another body to be set up to manage a fragmented and inconsistent social housing sector. There are different tiers of AHBs and then we have the local authorities, none of which is quite the same. The lines of accountability are different for different types of social housing. The standards are different. The rents are different. In many cases the differential rents are different as between approved housing body housing and local authority housing.

I will give a simple example I have come across. I am more familiar with local authority housing. If there are problems, for example, in the quality or maintenance of local authority housing, as there often is, it is possible to go directly to the local authority and say there is a problem. If no response is forthcoming, a motion can be brought to the council. The elected representatives can have motions passed to do something about certain things. However, with AHBs it is not possible to do this. Much of the money is provided by the State to the point where the ambition to get approved housing bodies off balance sheet has not been successful because the level of State support is such that they would not exist without public funding. However, we do not have the same lines of accountability in being able to do something on behalf of the tenants if there is a problem.

I am dealing with a case - it will be interesting to see how it unfolds - where a number of tenants in an approved housing body building have informed me of very bad sound insulation between units. It does not affect just one or two tenants. About half a dozen tenants have said they are absolutely tortured by the poor sound insulation between units. By the way, they have said the standard of the units in which they have to live is different from the standard of units in the very same block which are not AHB units but which were built as private units, although they are being leased back under the HAP scheme. That is the bizarre situation in which we find ourselves. There is a group of AHB tenants and another group of HAP scheme tenants living in different standard accommodation according to the tenants. This has been disputed by the AHB which claims there is no difference between them. I am trying to get to the bottom of the matter. However, it is made all the more difficult because we are dealing with all of these different situations. There are local authority tenants, HAP scheme tenants and AHB tenants.

In addition, I have discovered in the case of the AHB that there is also a private property management company. With whom does one deal? Is it the private property management company,which apparently looks after the common areas or the AHB? As an elected representative, I cannot go to the local authority. What is the role of the local authority in this instance? It not the same. Social housing tenants are in a totally different situation, depending on whether they are in an AHB unit, a local authority house or a HAP scheme tenancy. It is different again if they are in the rental accommodation scheme, RAS. It could be different again, depending on whether it is tier 1, tier 2 or tier 3 of the approved housing body. To me, that is a problem.

I do not blame the AHBs for this problem because, as I said, they often arose as voluntary charity organisations that were trying to fill a gap that the State had failed to fill. While their intentions are good, it seems that the Government is taking advantage of the situation in a way that ultimately is problematic from the point of view of ensuring consistency in the quality and standard of social housing and the rights of tenants in social housing. There is no consistency in rents. There is no consistency in whom one approaches if one has a problem. There is no consistency in the role elected public representatives have in being able to intervene on behalf of tenants. The Government seems to be making the situation worse overall because of its ambition to unload it all on the approved housing body sector, instead of doing it in the more traditional way through providing local authority housing. I have a problem in that regard.

I do not know what to say about it because on the one hand I genuinely recognise that the people in these AHBs are trying to do a good thing but on the other hand I have a problem with that inconsistency from the point of view of tenants and all sorts of anomalies are thrown up about it. A person in a council house can transfer much more easily than a person in an approved housing body, AHB. If the family grows and goes from a two-bedroom need to a three or four-bedroom need and much of the AHB stock is one or two bedrooms, the family cannot transfer back to the local authority. Even if it is nominated from the local authority list to go into an AHB house, which it might be very glad of at the time, if its need changes it cannot be transferred back. It seems to me the family should be able to transfer.

The same resources are not available to approved housing bodies to deal with maintenance or anti-social issues. There is very little consistency in all of this. Many of the AHBs simply do not have the resources to deal with these situations. There is a big problem. Having a regulator may streamline it a bit more but is there not a problem in the lack of consistency of standards and rights for tenants, rents and so on in different types of social housing? A person in social housing should have the same rights and standards regardless of the type of social housing they are in. None of this is an attack on the AHBs but it is a significant concern I have about just how fragmented and inconsistent the situation is and consequently how tenants in different types of social housing or different AHBs are in different situations. Even I, as an elected representative who is reasonably knowledgeable about these things, often find myself very confused as to who to go to and what power I have to intervene on behalf of tenants depending what type of social housing or what type of AHB we are talking about, whether it is council housing, HAP, rental accommodation supplement, RAS, or whatever. I will be interested to hear what the Minister of State has to say in response to this and how the Bill progresses over the next few Stages.

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