Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have the opportunity to conclude the debate and I will try to deal with some of the questions raised as well. There were wide and varied matters raised and although they may not all relate to the Bill, I will try to address some of them.

I thank all Deputies for their contributions to the debate, particularly those who put the work in to see what is in the legislation and what we are trying to do. We are not seeking to add red tape, rather we want to reinforce the voluntary code that already exists, improve the housing body sector and make it easier for these to do business and raise finance. It is about having trust in the system and protect these organisations, as well as taxpayers' money. Most people understand what we are trying to achieve and accept it. I hope the Bill will get through the House quite quickly in order that we can get on with other debates and business.

I welcome and am encouraged by the level of support for the Bill and the recognition of the important work done by the interim regulator, the regulatory committee and approved housing bodies in advance of statutory regulation.

I also recognise the voluntary code that they all accepted and worked with over the past couple of years.

I am confident that, working with Deputies, this important legislation can be progressed quickly to build on the momentum of the approved housing bodies, AHBs, and work in the social housing sector. Some Deputies expressed a fear last night that the housing bodies are the only option and are taking over. I often hear that concern at council level too. That is not the case. Housing bodies work in tandem with local authorities and, very often, under the direction and guidance of local authorities, along with our Department, on many sites. They are an addition to the system and have proved effective in many cases, certainly when it comes to managing their housing stock and tenants. We can work with them and learn from them but they are not a threat to local authorities. I know that some councillors feel they have less power in this area. I have asked the approved housing bodies to engage more with councillors, through council meetings and so forth, to build that relationship. I have also stressed to councillors that they need to develop relationships with approved housing bodies, get to know them and work with them closely. I sometimes think it is a throwback to previous times when councillors felt that they owned council houses and could dish them out to their people. It is hard for them to understand that proper housing legislation and methods for dealing with the allocation of housing mean decisions on housing allocation are not for individual councillors or politicians to take. The system must be fair to everybody. It is important we recognise that. Housing bodies, working with local authorities, help us to increase the delivery of houses on and off balance sheet, which is what we are trying to do. It increases the supply of social housing and that is what we are trying to achieve.

I will address some of the important issues raised during the debate last night and tonight. A number of Deputies last night raised the important issue of the classification of approved housing bodies following the EUROSTAT decision. This Bill will not be an impediment to reclassification. It was being designed long before the reclassification issue arose. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and I have been clear that the classification treatment of AHBs will not affect ambitious plans under Rebuilding Ireland as AHBs are earmarked to play a critical role in contributing one third of the 50,000 social homes due to be delivered under the plan, and more thereafter. It is important to examine what measures could be taken in the medium to long term to develop the AHB sector which could lead to reclassification. My Department has been engaging with the sector and the Department of Finance on this important issue for the past 12 weeks or more. It must be accepted, however, that this will most likely be a longer-term objective. It is not the most urgent issue in the Department, although we recognise that it must be addressed. Many issues remain to be teased out. Some of the proposals extend beyond housing policy and will require in-depth analysis. I compliment the Irish Council for Social Housing, ICSH, which is doing a large amount of work in this area, including with Department officials as they try to progress the issue.

The issue of credit unions was raised last night. Deputies Cassells and Jan O'Sullivan referred to credit union involvement in funding special purpose vehicles. The House has discussed this matter on a number of occasions. I would very much welcome the involvement of credit unions and their funds in social housing. There are other projects where there is scope for credit union involvement. As I have stated numerous times, there is a great match between the provision of housing for older people and credit union funds. I hope we will be able to match up these two areas much better. The credit unions have been pushing to do that.

The Department, aware of Central Bank changes, has supported this initiative in conjunction with the ICSH and encouraged engagement between the sector and the credit unions. The framework is in place and it is primarily a matter for the credit unions to progress. Deputy Jan O'Sullivan indicated that the Government needed to do more to bring these two sides together but we are not allowed to do that as this is private money that is separate from the Government. We cannot put the two sides together or make this happen. The Government must stand back slightly. We designed the framework and funded the ICSH to design different solutions and research different models. We worked with the sector. The Central Bank can make changes but the Government cannot force this to happen. It must happen naturally because it involves access to finance that is not taxpayers' money.

I want to be clear on this issue because people are probably beginning to doubt me. I have met representatives of the Credit Union Development Association, CUDA, numerous times and they have indicated that they have completed all of the work necessary to underpin an investor special purpose vehicle, SPV, but have not yet formally established it as a corporate entity as the cost involved would not be justified until such a time as a clear investment opportunity is available. The SPV is ready and can be switched on in a matter of days. It is not a complicated business and the work on it has been done. I have said this for months and I have encouraged some of the players and stakeholders to engage with them and try to draw down that money. It is not that the case that the credit union movement is not ready. There is a model in place if some of the AHBs are of a mind to avail of it. I cannot be any clearer on that. It is important to note that the reclassification decision does not prevent AHBs from accessing private finance and I want to be very clear on that. Three AHBs have been successful in securing private finance. Oaklee Housing has done so through a German bank and two others have done so through Allied Irish Banks. We are not impeding the AHBs in that regard.

I will revert to Deputy Ó Broin if I do not cover all the points he raised last night. He noted that local authorities are not included in the Bill. As statutory bodies in their own right, local authorities should not be covered by this Bill and it would not be appropriate to include them. The focus of the Bill is the regulation of the AHB sector. AHBs are not statutory bodies.

The established practice in appointing board members to the regulator is to use the Public Appointments Service process and that is the clear intention here. We can clarify that matter further should the Deputy require but that is the plan.

The Deputy's point on regulatory co-operation was well made. Our view was probably that this issue had been covered under the memorandum of understanding between the regulators. We tried to avoid complication, conflict and duplication but I will be happy to discuss with the Deputy whether we need to strengthen the wording or revisit the issue.

On tenancy management, the regulator will look at the policies of AHBs in respect of their tenancies, whereas the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, will continue to deal with the relationship between AHBs, landlords and tenants. The RTB was empowered to initiate investigations of its own volition and, as such, restricting the regulator in this area would not make sense. If I misunderstood Deputy Ó Broin, I would be happy to tease out the issue with him. The Deputy and other speakers referred to bringing the whole regulatory system together, including social housing and the general housing stock. The local authorities do a good job in this area, which is well managed. If there are issues the Deputy wants to tease out, we can look at them, although not in this Bill. I understand the point he makes.

Deputy Jan O'Sullivan raised the important issue of the merging of AHBs. While the Department acknowledges that the merger process has been slow and few mergers have taken place, we support and encourage mergers. We will be happy to discuss suggestions as to how to do encourage it further. Mergers would make sense in some cases. We are happy to allow for that over a period of time.

Fees were also mentioned by a few Deputies, including Deputy O'Sullivan. While the Bill does include provision for the charging of fees by the regulator, it is not intended to charge fees in the initial stages of the operation on the grounds that this would be a further regulatory burden. However, fees will be discussed with the regulator at some stage. I do not believe it is intended to apply excessive fees, which will probably just cover costs. Deputy O'Sullivan asked last night what kinds of figures were being bandied about. I have heard large sums mentioned by others but the Department has not discussed the matter. Charges will be discussed at the appropriate time but we do not believe it is necessary to charge fees now.

Deputy Pringle raised the issue of duplication of regulators and Deputy Danny Healy-Rae and others raised a similar issue when they stated there were too many regulators. I assure the Deputies that there will be no duplication. A system is already in place under the voluntary code through the agency and we do not seek to add more red tape. This is a transition from voluntary to statutory regulation which will build on existing infrastructure in the housing agency. Provision is made for the transfer of staff from the housing agency to the regulator. There have been excellent examples, and we all know them, of housing associations and housing bodies up and down the country doing great work. They also need to be protected and there have been odd cases where these bodies have not had best practice in operation. We are trying to encourage best practice. The sector wants this regulation and it is not a case of introducing more red tape that it does not want. Housing bodies want to be protected in a system that everybody trusts and has faith in and helps them to raise money and carry out their business.

Deputy Mattie McGrath, as usual, made a very passionate contribution about an AHB in his locality. I am familiar with the AHB in question and the work it does and there are many other AHBs in Tipperary and around the country that have done good work. I assure the Deputy that the Bill respects the size of AHBs and the compliance requirements will be proportionate to the size and scale of the AHB sector. Section 38 of the Bill provides for this and it was raised again by Deputy Ó Cuív tonight. It is recognised that a one-size-fits-all approach to regulation is not suitable for the AHB sector as there is a wide diversity of organisations in terms of aims, objectives and ambitions. While a minimum level of regulation will apply to all AHBs, more intensive regulation will apply to the larger housing bodies, which is common sense. This will depend on the size, scale and level of financial risk associated with the development plans of the individual AHB. Some of the AHBs are large and we encourage that. Some of the major players intend to do much more in conjunction with local authorities, councillors, public representatives and public bodies. We will facilitate that but it also highlights the need for proper regulation. Those were some of the issues that were raised last night.

On the issues raised this evening, I will try to deal as many as I can. Deputy Michael Collins is still in the Chamber and I will answer his points. The issue of islands was raised. We support social housing if the local authority wants to do that. We, as a Department, do not lecture local authorities or tell them where to put each individual house or what scheme to bring forward. We work with them on that, but they bring forward suggestions to us about where the need is and who needs the homes. We are happy to work with them on that. There have been schemes on one island that Deputy Ó Cuív represents where an approved housing body wished to remove itself from the provision of housing because there was not a demand for its housing. There are different situations on different islands, but it is something we would support when needs be. It is, however, a local authority decision by councillors. I am sure Members have councillors working with them on that. If there is need for housing on a certain island, the case should be brought forward. The funding is there to roll out social housing. That is what we are trying to do. We have encouraged local authorities everywhere to increase their pipelines of projects and bring forward more projects. If there is a specific area that Members wish to mention, they should bring it through their local authority and bring it to our desk or consult an AHB which might be glad to work with them on such a project. The Minister of State, Deputy Kyne, recently established an interdepartmental group to consider island issues in general. One issue raised was social housing, so the issue has been flagged and we are happy to respond to that, if there is a proven need. There is money there for it.

On islands and their needs, something that Deputy Danny Healy-Rae often raises, and he raised it last night again, is that there is no rural social one-off housing. There can be but that is a request of a local authority. Officials in my Department cannot work out where an individual one-off rural house is needed, but the schemes are there. Some local authorities choose not to bring them forward, or rather they concentrate their efforts on larger-scale developments of ten or 20 units. They can bring them forward if they want, and the various schemes exist under which one-off rural social houses can be built, if need be, whether on an island or anywhere else. Last night Deputy Danny Healy-Rae said there were only 12 in the whole of Kerry in recent years. That is a Kerry decision, not a Department decision, and I want to be very clear about that. If people have issues, they should engage with the local authorities to see what the real issues are behind that. The Department does try to facilitate things where there is a need for housing in a certain area.

In fairness, Deputy Michael Collins did mention the rural resettlement scheme, and I totally agree with him on that. There is scope there. We did engage with one of his colleagues and other, but I have not heard him mention it before. Maybe he did and I missed it, but if it such a big issue for him, I am happy to work with him on it. There is a scheme in place. It was mentioned during the Government formation talks - I was not there - and some of the Deputies who mentioned it no longer form part of the Government, but some of them did pursue it afterwards, kept in touch with us, and we have worked with them on it. We looked at the Clare model and who was engaged there. About 800 households would have been facilitated over a long number of years through the rural resettlement scheme. It might not be the thousands the Deputy said but maybe it could be. It is something we would like to put on a more formal footing.

Resettlement is catered and allowed for under the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme, where it is possible to transfer. If someone is in Dublin and wants to live in Mayo or Cork, for example, he or she can use the HAP scheme to do so. The limit is slightly different between counties but movement is facilitated. If it is not working, then we would be happy to engage with the Deputy on it. We want to make it more formal because there is a lot of potential there. If families do not have a home in Dublin, Meath or Cork and want to move to a different county, we are very happy for them to engage with us and express an interest. We will work with them to do that. I want to be clear on that. It is not just a housing matter. Other services need to be put in to make it a viable option for people, but it is something that we should do and encourage. We are looking to develop the passport model whereby people would be able to be on waiting lists in a number of different local authorities and they would be notified if something that suited came up in a different area.

The Deputy made the point that there are vacant houses in some counties and areas. We now have vacant homes officers in every county and there is a target in the vacant housing plan. There are a range of schemes that the local authorities can avail of or use if there are vacant properties. These properties are generally owned by people privately. If the Deputy wishes to spend his time finding 20 or 30 vacant properties and encouraging the owners to come forward to avail of our schemes, we are very happy to do that. I keep telling everybody - councillors, Deputies and so on - that if they are aware of vacant properties in their areas, they know who owns them, the history behind them, and the complications that go with that, the Department is happy to work on solutions if they want to bring them forward to our vacant homes officers.

There are a range of schemes in place that are being underutilised. I scratch my head sometimes why this is so when I see vacant properties, because there are some very attractive schemes in place. The repair and lease back is one of them that is very attractive. If a person has a vacant home, and it could one of those over the shop premises on a street that could need €30,000 or €40,000 to bring it up to standard, we can provide that with a grant and the owner can repay that over the years with the rental income. It is a very attractive scheme, and yet there is a very small uptake of it. We may change it to make it more attractive. The Deputy may or may not have heard of the scheme, but perhaps he could encourage the people he knows who have these vacant properties to take up the scheme. Likewise, local authorities can become involved in the purchase and renew scheme. Whether on a high street or rural area, if there is a need for social housing and there is a house that is dilapidated or in poor condition, resources are provided for the local authority to buy the house and draw down resources to bring it back up to a high standard to make it a home. Absolutely we would like to see vacant properties back in use. It is total common sense, and we are all for it. None of us likes walking down any street or driving through any town, village or rural area and seeing vacant properties. We are very much engaged in that space. We do not have the resources to go chasing after every property - I wish we did - so we need people like the Deputy to bring the properties forward. We have asked local authorities that if they have someone who needs a house on the one hand and someone on the other who has a house, they should bring them together. That can be looked at as well. The Deputy should get involved in that if he wants to raise it as well.

I took issue with the Deputy earlier and do so again. I do not believe that any local authority has evicted anyone from a private house that it has bought. If the Deputy has proof of that or has a letter saying that, I want to see it and he should bring it in. I ask him please, not to come in here and tell me that local authorities are buying houses and evicting people to put someone else in. I do not think that is true. If it is true, I want to know about it and I am sure the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, would also like to know about it. Local authorities are encouraged and facilitated, and money is provided, to buy vacant properties and places. They generally do not compete with the private sector. I certainly would not believe that they are buying up houses with people in them and putting them out. The Deputy has a chance to take it back if it is not true or he does not have proof. If he has the proof, he should bring it in, but it is unfair to say it if it is not true. It would be wrong and a very wrong statement to make. In many places where a house can be bought cheaper than it would cost to build or replace and no one else is chasing it or wants it, we encourage local authorities to buy it. It makes common sense. In other cases they are involved in turnkey properties or in purchase and renew, but we ask them to focus their efforts mainly on building new houses, which is what they are doing. Naturally, if there are good deals for taxpayers and there are vacant properties or houses lying empty, it makes sense to acquire them. Not everyone agrees with that policy. I agree with it because to me it makes total sense. It makes sense in many areas where it would cost more to build a house than buy one. It should not be at the expense of someone else, and they always try not to compete. They would be very slow to buy a house in most cases and would hang back to see if anyone else wanted to buy it first. If the Deputy has different information on that, it is something we will look at again. Certainly with vacant properties, funding will be provided if local authorities want to buy the houses and renovate them.

The Deputy referred to planning permission. There are guidelines. I am often in rural Cork where there are many houses built. I keep hearing people say in the House that there are no one-off houses or that planning has been stopped. An average of 5,000 one-off houses have been built every year in recent years. It is not true to say that there are none, that we are against it, or that Fine Gael wants to stop it. Yes, it has got more complicated because there are many more houses being built in rural areas. It is harder environmentally to pass every field. There have been changes on the social and economic need to live in a rural house. There is an encouragement and the planners' philosophy is to group houses together. Tipperary brought forward a lovely scheme recently to encourage a rural housing scheme as a solution to building one-off houses. There is a high cost to individuals of one-off houses to provide water, sewerage and everything else to the site, so sometimes the Government has a duty to provide other options. We look at all options, but it is not true to say that there are no one-off houses. I was in the Deputy's area recently and I know that is not true because I saw many one-off houses being built, some of them fine houses.

There are issues of the public accessing finance and so on, which we are trying to work on, but it is untrue that the loan scheme we brought forward has been unsuccessful. It has been more than successful and has been too successful in the drawdown. It does not suit everyone - I accept that - and I know the point the Deputy was making. In some cases people argue that the banks are not making money available. The Central Bank rules are independent of the Government but they are there to protect people against overborrowing. All of us here know far too many people who overborrowed. I certainly know people of my generation, left, right and centre, who were lured into overborrowing and into paying far too much for a house. We are trying to avoid that, which is why the bank rules are there. That is not to stop someone with a viable proposal to build a house. We have affordable housing schemes. Cork brought forward a lot, not to mention Kinsale, where there are great developments with affordable housing. We want to do more of that.

Naturally, when we can use State-owned land to build affordable housing, we should do so and we will. We will do more on that issue.

Deputy Ó Cuív made a point earlier, and he was nearly boasting at one stage which I was surprised by, when he quoted the figures from 2004 to 2011. I would be embarrassed if I was in the Government from 2004 to 2011 because it only built 33,000 social houses in boom years of high level activity. In one year alone some 90,000 houses were built and the Deputy could stand there and nearly say it was a great achievement to have built 33,000 social houses. It is because there were so few social houses built in those years that we have a problem today. Social housing should have been kept at a high level of activity all the way through those years. Policies were changed to stop more or less local authorities building social houses in many cases. When we got the finance together - Deputy Jan O'Sullivan started this when she was in that Department along with Deputies Penrose and Kelly and ourselves when we got a hold of that brief - we tried to turn that around to put local authorities back in the space of building social houses.

A commitment was made, in conjunction with this House, to build a minimum of 10,000 social houses. I accept some Members want to build more and that is fine but we made a commitment to build a minimum of 10,000. That meant going from practically zero up to 10,000. That is what the level was at in some of those boom years. In the year that 90,000 houses were built in this country, less than 5,000 of them were for social housing. That is not something to be proud of. It is something the Government tried to fix and I hope future Governments, be they Fine Gael-led or not, will also make sure we stick to a certain level of social housing builds every year. We have a plan to deliver 10,000 social houses a year. That is this year. I know they are not all brand new builds. Over 6,000 will be brand new builds and some will be acquired or leased but there will be 10,000 additional social houses available this year. Next year, it will be up on 11,000 and under Project Ireland 2040, with the ten-year capital money set aside, it goes to 12,000 social houses a year. That is our commitment and I ask everybody else to match or go beyond it because nobody else has matched it with commitments. We are trying to make it happen but for Deputy Ó Cuív to come in here and try to compare 2004 to 2011 with 2011 to 2016, when the country was broke and when he handed us over an overdraft of €20 billion per year in spend and to try to claim that from 2011 to 2014 the Government did not build enough houses is not being realistic.

We started building houses again the first chance we got when there was money available, and rightly so, and we are still playing catch-up. That is why tonight there are still far too many families who do not have a house. It did not happen overnight. It happened because of housing failures for many years in this country. Land was managed in the wrong way and the wrong approach to building social housing was taken. It will take time to correct that fully but we are going in the right direction. We need to keep doing this and keep adding 10,000 to 12,000 social houses a year every year. That is how the housing shortage will be addressed. That is only social housing. State-owned land and State resources also need to be used to finance and make affordable housing available. When we do that, we must also try to activate private land with resources. We have to do that for a long number of years with long-term plans. To build 33,000 social houses in seven or eight of the busiest years for housing construction is an embarrassment and we would not have 1,700 families without a house today if that was not the case in those years. They were wasted years when it comes to housing and at the same time people were paying €0.5 million for houses that were not worth that money and being choked with mortgages for 30 or 40 years. I am surprised that Deputy Ó Cuív made that point. I might agree with other parts of what he said but not on that point.

The discussion was also about approved housing bodies and their roles, the housing supply in general and homelessness versus rough sleepers. I am glad Deputy Ó Cuív tried to make the distinction there and I agree with him on that because those matters are often confused. Again, I see that some of our non-governmental organisations, NGOs, when they discuss homeless families, produce pictures of someone living on the street. There are not families living on the street. Sadly, there are far too many people sleeping rough who are on the streets. They are individuals in different situations with different stories and we have the housing first approach which is a great help to try to encourage those people to come in off the streets, avail of the services and eventually live in a house. There is no reason for anyone to be living on the street or for anyone to be living in a van. I am not saying we have a house for everybody but there are a lot of other supports that are a lot better than living on the street and if we keep intervening enough, there is no reason for anyone to be living on the street. It happens for different reasons but it does not happen to families. There are far too many families in family-hubs or hotels. I know that and I am not trying to deny that. We try to find them a family home but there is no reason for someone to be living in a van as Deputy Michael Collins has said, or for someone to be living on the street. If the Deputy knows someone living on the street, he should ask him or her to engage with our services. There are an extra 20 care workers on the streets on a nightly basis trying to ask people to come in to avail of our services. Wherever we think there is a need we provide more emergency beds. That is not the end solution, it is just the start of getting someone back into a house. Naturally, while we build more houses and increase the supply of housing, we can provide even more solutions.

Other issues were mentioned around water, sewerage and investment, which were also mentioned last night. The Minister of State, Deputy Stanton, has raised the issue with Irish Water and Deputy Brassil raised it last night as well. There are complications there and we have seen that on a lot of social housing sites. Again, Deputy Michael Collins might have said nothing is happening but there are about 300 social housing sites open today with over 6,000 social houses under construction. People can see that. They are not fools and they know things are happening. It might not be quick enough but it is certainly a lot more than nothing. We have got reports of delays with Irish Water from a lot of those sites. We have got reports of delays or complications at private sites and in some cases we have tried to service these sites as well. We acknowledge there is a lot of progress to be made there. Irish Water has a capital budget and it is spending it but we need to do things more quickly in some cases and we need to change it and catch up. Irish Water is catching up and we can do that.

On the control issue that Deputy Michael Collins raised, it is not that we mistrust local authorities. There was a scheme in place to allow local authorities do housing schemes of up to €2 million, without having to go through all the stages in the Department. They chose not to use that in most cases. That was their choice. There was a discussion last year to bring it up to €6 million but that has not happened yet and it is still being discussed. We are not convinced it is the right way. Everyone keeps telling me the four stage process is causing all the delays in social housing but it is not because we have changed that process to a possible 59 weeks. The majority, about 80% of proposals, are coming in a little bit over that at about 60 weeks but it is not taking years as it did years ago. We have changed that process. I have seen schemes that took four to ten years in the past. I believe those days are gone and they should be gone because we track every scheme now. Local authorities are not telling me the four stage process or the rules therein is causing the delays. If all those stages were taken out, six weeks might be saved in some cases. There might be genuine disputes and disagreements between our officials and local authority officials in some cases and there might be toing and froing on that. I often say we should forget the emails and phonecalls and meet in the middle to sort it out and they generally do so. That might cause delays but on the majority of sites there is no reason why it cannot go through quite quickly. Even if the control mechanism was changed and the four stage process was moved away from, it would not give us houses any more quickly. We can have all these discussions but I am not sure it would achieve anything. We have reformed the system, which is making changes and allows for change.

I have only touched on some of the issues that were raised and there are probably others as well. I know Deputy Ó Broin had more questions and I had a note on them but I do not know where I left it so if I have missed anything I ask that he let me know. The last thing I will mention is the tenant purchase scheme, which was raised by a few Members. It has been dragging on far too long. Deputy Ó Cuív and a few others raised that as well as some of the Members speaking last night. It is proposed to bring that forward in the coming weeks around the social housing package. I strongly believe there should be a tenant purchase scheme, and a tenant purchase option for people to buy a house. The current scheme says that one has to prove an income of over €15,000 to qualify. It is a generous scheme in terms of the discount one gets on the house but the €15,000 is a block to some people who might have the money from winning the lotto or who might have otherwise found the money to buy the house. We are trying to find a way for that to be encouraged. The science behind the €15,000 requirement and the reason it is there is because generally, to be able to maintain a house after buying it, one would need to have an income of some sort over €15,000 in most cases and that is well proven. We are trying to see how we can facilitate that and if we can find a way that if a family or an individual can prove they can finance the purchase of a house and maintain it thereafter, we want to find the space to do that because we want to encourage tenant purchases where it is at all possible.

There were probably more matters raised but I will leave it at that because my time is probably nearly up at this stage.

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