Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

That is good. Unless they have been updated, according to my figures, there are 547 voluntary housing associations of which 273 have signed up. My thought when I saw that was that we are reliant on 547 voluntary housing bodies to provide housing but they are completely unregulated. It was an extraordinary moment on the road to Damascus, as I said at a meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts.

I am very familiar with voluntary housing bodies having spent 17 years on a local authority but I did not realise the number was 547 and that they were completely unregulated. I did not realise that they fell between two stools as even though they receive 100% public funding, they did not come under the European Convention on Human Rights or the RTB. This has been rectified since then to a certain extent with regard to the RTB. Are they public bodies in the same way as a local authority for the purposes of the European convention?

I cannot believe so few have signed up, although I acknowledge the interim regulator said those who did sign up account for a substantial number of the houses. I do not see why the others did not sign up. Of those that did, 83% demonstrated substantial compliance but 9% required further written clarification. I welcome that we are doing this but I have concerns that it is creating another layer of bureaucracy. I realise we need to regulate it but at more than €800,000 per year, do we need it? I agree with the legislation but did the Minister examine whether we could regulate this in another way without adding this extra expense?

I have great concern about the Government's aim to provide 50,000 new houses with one third of them to be provided by the voluntary sector. The aim is to allow people to purchase houses, with which I have no problem if they are in the name of the person. People will also be allowed to lease houses. My understanding is that at one time tenants of AHBs had the exact same rights to lifelong tenancy and controlled rent as local authority tenants and that the only distinction related to the ability to buy the house. This is what I was told repeatedly and what I believed. This has become more complicated because different durations are involved. Some of the voluntary bodies have five-year and ten-year contracts and others have longer contracts. They have bought or acquired houses and clients do not have tenancy for life. I ask for this to be clarified.

The amount of loans taken out by AHBs is €1.683 billion. There has been a significant increase since 2016. I thank the Oireachtas Library and Research Service for its digest, which points out that the increase since then is 469%.

I welcome the Bill and I look forward to it being teased out on Committee Stage. I am not a member of the committee. Matters regarding the independence of the regulator, reporting back to the Minister, fees and so on need to be teased out.

I am using this opportunity to highlight what has happened in housing policy in this country. Significant money has gone into this sector over the years but I sat on the city council in Galway and there has not been a single euro to build a house since 2009. A housing crisis has been deliberately created in Galway. It is a consequence of repeated Government policies. If a local authority house has not been built since 2009, it stands to reason that there will be a crisis. What decisions were made to channel money to voluntary housing bodies that were unregulated? The local authority was starved of funds, leading to an essential part of the crisis. A number of games were being played. One was accountancy, of course, to take the AHB money off the books and state it was not Government debt. Another was the complete outsourcing of housing provision to voluntary bodies.

We have to accept that voluntary bodies are an essential part of the solution and regulation is appropriate but I will not accept going down the road of the Government abdicating its responsibility and putting an onus on these bodies. They have been unregulated until now and have not even seen fit to join up to the voluntary code in 273 cases. Putting this forward as Government policy is unacceptable.

I welcome the Bill but I am putting on record my most serious concerns about Government housing policy despite the Minister's rhetoric. Galway has a serious housing crisis. It has no master plan. I have said repeatedly that we have public land but it is being developed in an ad hocmanner. Ceannt Station, the docks and the Dyke Road all have separate plans, with some of them being led by private developers. Imagine that in a city that has a housing crisis, with people on a waiting list since 2002. It is not clear how the voluntary bodies take applicants. I understood they all came from the housing waiting list but that does not seem to be the case.

There is a role for AHBs in a regulated and controlled environment and as an add-on to a housing policy where the State is the main player in the provision of social housing.

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