Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will address that. Also, just this week, I approved another 142 cost rental tenancies which will be delivered late this year and early next year. There is a really strong pipeline coming through.

We would always look at acquisition, which is important, where appropriate. We are looking at schemes at the moment. I have already mentioned dormant or stalled planning permissions, where we are looking at partnering or purchasing to deliver affordable and social homes.

I want to use the opportunity to reiterate the importance of the purchase for tenants in situscheme. We have made it abundantly clear to local authorities and I also ask Deputies to be very clear. All local authorities have been instructed that where a home is being sold where there is a tenant in situwho is a HAP or RAS tenant, they are to buy that home.

There are more than 700 such tenants and the number is growing every day. I will be providing a breakdown, as I have committed to doing, when we have the data between the purchase with the tenants in situtogether with pure acquisitions. That is having an impact and I ask Deputies, if they come across any cases where they believe the local authority is not acting on that, to let me know directly. I have received some cases where we have been able to help move them through. I have met directly with every chief executive in the country and every director of service for housing, and I met them again the week before last by way of a webinar, to reiterate the point. This power has been devolved to them, they now have the power and the resources to do this, and I want them to do it. This is a good measure in increasing our social housing stock and, most importantly, in ensuring that where people who have received a notice to quit in those two categories I have mentioned, they are able to purchase the home and to secure that home for those people for life.

I want to reiterate one thing as I am aware Deputy Boyd Barrett was not here for the very start of my opening remarks. The changes I have made in respect of the income threshold of €5,000 is an interim step. I have brought in a transitionary measure. Many Deputies both in government and in opposition have raised cases with me where people were marginally over the limit over the past year. I thank my officials for the work they have done. They have worked through this with local authorities and there is a retrospective nature to this in the form of a look-back provision that can go back 14 months. If someone is taken off the list, he or she can reapply and go back on the list at the space they were on, with additional time added for the period they were off the list. I have asked each local authority to contact directly in writing those applicants or people who would have been moved off that list. People will have to reapply then and will then get back to their original place on the list. They will have until 30 June next year to do that.

I will be bringing forward in the first quarter of next year the recommendations and proposals around a new social housing income scheme which will be more flexible than the ones we have been dealing with, in particular since 2011. I have outlined that already in my remarks which, I believe, have been circulated to Deputies.

I look forward with interest to the Deputies' contributions. As I did at the outset to Deputy Ó Broin when was the only Member here on time, I wish the other Deputies a very happy Christmas. I hope they get a break, spend time with family and friends, and I thank them for all for their engagement during the course of the year. While I have not always agreed with everything, it has been interesting.

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