Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate. Like every other Member, as a local public representative, I am keenly aware of the housing difficulties in every constituency. It differs depending on whether one is in an urban or rural area but there are problems everywhere. I have a particular interest in this legislation because up to early last year, the Minister and I had extensive discussions on housing at the Committee of Public Accounts, of which I am Chairman. We had three or four public meetings regarding the funding of housing and part of that work focused on AHBs. Departmental officials appeared before the committee on a number of occasions along with people from social housing agencies as well as some city and county managers so we had a broad discussion to get a full picture regarding expenditure by the State in this area, which was useful and helpful. We came up with specific recommendations regarding AHBs and the need for statutory regulation, which was being carried out on a non-statutory basis. I am, therefore, keen to endorse the legislation. The principle underpinning it is good. Members on all sides of the House have called for it. Nobody should question the principle of the legislation, although, obviously, there are matters of detail.

I will not stray too much into the overall local authority housing issue but it is linked to AHBs. I do not have the exact figures and I do not know if they are even available. Some useful information has been produced by the Oireachtas Library and Research Service along with the work done by the Committee of Public Accounts. I also have knowledge of the area. AHBs are independent not-for-profit housing bodies with a housing stock of approximately 300,000 units, which is a fabulous number of houses throughout the country. I do not know the gross value of the total assets owned and controlled by AHBs. Perhaps the figure is available but if we take the average value of a house to be €250,000, their value is at least €8 billion. Over the next two years, in its drive to deliver 47,000 new social housing units targeted up to 2021, the Department hopes that one third of these, which is approximately 15,000 units, will be delivered by AHBs. It is only an estimate but is as good an estimate as any of which I am aware but based on the average value of those houses being €250,000, they would be worth €4 billion. We are talking about organisations that control housing assets worth well over €10 billion. That is an important issue. Wearing my Committee of Public Accounts hat, I know people will appreciate that it is important that we have proper regulation, processes, controls and governance to ensure this money is invested wisely for the purpose for which it is voted from this House. I have no issue with that.

It is a big change and some might say that it might not be the intention of the draft legislation but if we are going to regulate the organisations that will own and control 30% of the new social houses to be built in the next three years - organisations that already own 30,000 houses - we must regulate the local authorities that own the remaining houses. A local authority might have built a number of houses on a new estate while the houses on the opposite side or next door have been provided by an AHB. Some houses will be regulated while others will not. There is no logic to this. Perhaps officials in the Department were afraid that the local authorities would unhappy with being regulated but if we are going to regulate AHBs, which will, hopefully, have good governance procedures, there is nothing wrong with having the same control over senior unelected council officials throughout the country who are making equivalent decisions on spending money on houses, deciding where they will be located, who will be allocated houses, maintenance and dealing with tenants thereafter along with other people in the area. It is not right to hive this off on its own. What is here is good but it is only a fraction of what needs to be dealt with. The Minister could say that people can go to the Ombudsman, which they do but there should be a better system in place so that this is not always the default. Local authorities do not always like being brought to the Ombudsman and regularly try to deal with issues before they get an unfavourable decision from him or her.

There has been a move in recent years away from the State providing what it should provide, namely, housing in favour of asking somebody else to do it. I know it was bit of a trick. The Government probably thought it would be regarded as off-balance sheet funding. That was what we heard here for years but EUROSTAT has called our bluff on that and said that all these tier 3 agencies must be on the State's balance sheet. Their borrowings will be rightly on the State's balance sheet. Anybody in Ireland who tried to argue against that was not arguing from a logical position. A third of these funds are directly provided by the local authorities. Most of the balance of the funding is obtained from the Housing Agency and sometimes it can borrow on the private market but the bulk of these houses and the income received by AHBs comes through local authorities through the payment and availability scheme. All in all, what is good for one is good for the other and if it is important to regulate AHBs, we should also regulate the same activity when it is carried out by local authorities.

Local authorities have done a good job over the decades. Many local authorities will feel that AHBs are effectively surrogates for them to do the job they have always done. I am pleased the Minister is present because he will enjoy this story. He visited Portlaoise last year to open a lovely housing development in the town. It was probably one of the few that was in train at the time and was well worth a ministerial visit. We were delighted that he visited that development of 33 houses that day. It was a local authority scheme. It was pointed out to him that Laois County Council does not have one acre of ground in Portlaoise town on which to build another scheme because it has been starved of money. However, AHBs can come in from anywhere; I do not mind where they come from. If they are not based in Laois, they could be from Dublin or Carlow. These AHBs can come in with a scheme, find a development with planning permission that is not selling in the private sector because the private sector has no money and be allowed to build that scheme with a builder. Why can a local authority not do the same? We should not just facilitate AHBs. Local authorities also have a track record. The Minister will recall that trip during which he made a brief visit to a neighbouring farm and saw a number of cows. I enjoyed the joke but many people did not see the joke. He saw all these wonderful cows in the field just over the wall from where this housing development was located. I hope his shoes did not get too dirty in the farmyard. He took a picture and posted it on Twitter with a caption stating that he had now found out where the latte for a coffee came from. Many people thought this was dreadful and that it was a city Minister making a joke of people in the country but I saw the humour in it. If somebody is giving out about it-----

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