Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

So it was about soya lattes - very good. Was that not an excellent housing scheme and a perfect development strategically located at the centre of Portlaoise delivered by the local authority?

We should continue to support local authorities. They feel as if they have been sidestepped. When I visit my local authority, as every Member can do, I find that all housing is being delivered by AHBs. That is just how things are. I agree that there should be regulation, but I must make the case for local authorities to be allowed to continue their work. If they are doing it, they should be regulated, just like AHBs. That is the main point I wish to make, although I have many others to raise.

A lot of the funding comes through the capital allowance loan facility and the Housing Finance Agency. There is one important point around which people cannot get their heads. The Committee of Public Accounts was informed that the local authority allocated a property to a household the rent contribution of which was determined in using the preferred differential rent method. The local authority contributes to the approved housing body the difference between the household's contribution and the agreed rent, as agreed between the local authority and the approved housing body under the payment and availability scheme. The Department then reimburses the local authority. As such, the funding is still going through the local authority which has a key role to play. Deputy Catherine Murphy mentioned that some of them were cash-rich organisations. That issue needs to be looked at. If they are doing exceptionally well, this has to be taken into account when they are being funded. We know that substantial maintenance payments of €480 per annum are made. Things would be a lot better if local authorities could be given a budget to spend €450 in the maintenance of their housing stock. Perhaps then people would not be as quick to criticise them for not looking after the developments they have built. Part of the problem is that they are being starved of funding for maintenance, although it seems to be easily available to AHBs. I understand there is a need for it, but it seems that a lot of money is available.

We must recognise that the current non-statutory regulation has improved the situation in the last couple of years and been very important. We all know that a large number of AHBs have registered with the Housing Agency. We were informed that 260 AHBs were registered out of a total of 547. The recent briefing note states this figure has increased to 273. That means that some 245 bodies have not singed up to the voluntary code. They have assets of approximately €570 million, but only represent about 5% of the housing stock. That gives an indication of what is available. There is a certain undercurrent. There are a lot of small housing agencies. Some were founded for a specific purpose many years ago and are functioning well. They might provide housing for elderly or disabled persons in a town centre to prevent them from becoming isolated. These bodies are very good and run by volunteers. Some of the organisations do not have professional staff, but they will have to meet all of the regulations if they register. The implication is that they may be forced to merge. We have seen this happen in other walks of life. We are going to say to the people who did this wonderful job in their own area, whether it is an urban area or a small city, that owing to the requirements of the new regulations, they are not fit to continue and that the only option is for five or six bodies in a given area to merge. Perhaps there would be some benefit in that, but there would be a definite downside. I would not like to see organisations forced to amalgamate, unless they were satisfied that it would be in the interest of the people living in their houses.

The Minister might be a little surprised to hear me call for the regulation of local authorities. The regulation would not be too onerous because they have systems in place and should be able to handle it. We are, however, getting into an unusual situation where AHBs are concerned. There will be five statutory agencies with oversight of various aspects. The first is the local authority. Local authorities provide funding for AHBs to ensure they meet the criteria to receive State funds. Cearly, they have an oversight role in that respect. Second, AHBs are registered with the RTB and their tenants have rights which are overseen by that body. They are all charities. As such, they are regulated by the Charities Regulator which ensures they meet the criteria and have the correct memoranda in place to provide social housing, including a clause to prevent them from selling a property on. Furthermore, some of the AHBs are regulated by the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, insofar as their tenants have specific medical or disability needs. AHBs will now have a new regulator overseeing their activities, as well as the local authorities, the RTB and, in some cases, HIQA. I hope when all five state bodies charged with ensuring oversight are paid for, there will be some money left for social housing provision. This is something of which we want to be mindful whenever we add an extra layer. All of the bodies are probably useful in their own right. That said, it would be great if the new regulator could assume some of their functions, rather than telling a tenant who comes to us with a problem to go to the approved housing body; then, if they are not happy with it, the Residential Tenancies Board; and if they come back again, the Charities Regulator. If they do not get satisfaction there, we can tell him or her to go to HIQA, on top of which there will be the new regulator. I pity the tenants who will have to go through all of these bodies if they have a problem. I wonder if we ever think things through when we start to deal with these issues.

They are the main points I want to make. I say all of it constructively. I support the Bill which is long overdue. It has been mooted for six years. The Committee of Public Accounts was very strict and black and white in calling for this legislation to be implemented as urgently as possible. Some €10 billion worth of assets will be available shortly, most of which have been financed by the State. I really believe that when push comes to shove, the State should own those houses, not AHBs that are not accountable to the Oireachtas, a point to which I did not even get. The bodies will only be governed by a regulator that will be required to come before the committee. They will receive billions of euro of State funds between them. They will not be answerable in a council chamber and certainly will not be answerable to the Dáil because they are private charities. There is a major gap. I will address this issue in Private Members' legislation in due course. We are handing out billions of euro of taxpayers' money to build social housing. This should have been and was traditionally done by local authorities, but it is now done on a surrogate basis by AHBs. However, there is no Oireachtas oversight or accountability, which is a particular problem.

I will have to confirm this on Committee Stage, but I assume that every one of the bodies that receives funding will have to provide in its memoranda that its properties will always be used as social housing. We do not want to find ourselves in a situation where some of them will fold up and something else will suddenly happen when they are in administration. An administrator or a liquidator might come in as things go wrong and we might find that insolvency rules supersede the memoranda and that the properties would no longer be used as social housing. Some of the housing bodies have other properties. There are community and semi-commercial facilities in some of their developments. Since they have been financed so much by the taxpayer, I think the taxpayer is entitled to own them, notwithstanding the good work done by the AHBs. It would be better if the bodies which will receive the majority of their funds from the taxpayer through voted expenditure were answerable in some way, whether through the Committee of Public Accounts or the Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government. They cannot receive all of this money from the taxpayer every year without there being any accountability to the House.

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