Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I, too, extend very warm Christmas greetings to both my colleagues in opposition and in government, but especially to the staff who ensure this building and the work we do in it functions as smoothly as it does. In that, I include all of the official Oireachtas staff, the clerks, the ushers, and let us not forget the catering staff, the cleaners and, in particular at this time of the year, the long-suffering Bills Office staff who have to deal with enormous volumes of legislation at the last minute, and do so with exceptional professionalism. We all owe them a debt of gratitude.

As the Minister knows, our party members, along with others and many in his own party, have been calling for an increase in and widespread reform of social housing income eligibility thresholds for quite some time. As the Minister himself has said, they have not been changed since 2011. Notwithstanding the fact that real incomes have not increased significantly since then, we all have many examples of hard-working modest and low-income constituents who have either been denied access to social housing support or, indeed, been removed from the social housing list, in many cases losing significant numbers of years on a list because of the failure of governments to act on this issue.

When the decision was announced to increase the threshold by €5,000, we all welcomed this, and how could one not? The decision itself, however, raises a whole set of questions, and even with the publication of the review of the income eligibility thresholds that were subsequently published, many of the questions have still not been answered, notwithstanding the fact the Minister is talking about a wider reform which will take place at a later stage. There is a need for a better understanding of why he has taken these decisions at this point. I am not so sure we will get that today given the nature of a Dáil debate, but I have a recommendation which I would like the Minister to consider at the end.

My first issue is that I still do not understand where the €5,000 came from. In the first instance, it is always good to understand the rationale for it. I have read the eligibility review report twice and it does not explain in any clear or concise way where that threshold came from. While I welcome the clarification the Minister has given us today on the retrospective nature of it back to 2021, a point I will come back to later, it is just not clear why that figure of €5,000 was picked. In fact, when I read some of the report, it seems the underlying logic of decisions that were made subsequently has less to do with whether that is a sufficient amount of income to meet the needs of low and modest income working people but, rather, has more to do with the absence of an increase in Exchequer expenditure in respect of direct housing provision, as the report at one point states. There seems to be a concern that if we were to increase the threshold by too much, even if people needed it, that might have an adverse impact on the size of waiting lists, the length of waiting times etc. If that is the case, that is the wrong way to make such a decision.

The second issue I will raise is the continuation of the three bands system, even on an interim basis, which I believe is crazy. It would have been a very small number of households, according to the Minister’s own report, which would have been brought into the social housing support net if the remaining five counties had been brought into band 2. There is just no logic to this, and in fact the Minister’s own departmental report says a table that discusses this matter illustrates that the current three band structure is no longer internally logical given the movement of rents over time. I just do not understand why band 3 remains. I am not arguing against bands. There is a certain logic or validity to having some differentials between the very high areas, predominantly urban and commuter belt counties, and others, but those five counties which remain in the lowest band are getting a very raw deal, particularly given what is happening in rents in some of those counties. That is going to cause significant difficulties.

There are two other areas I wish to refer to which do not seem to receive any meaningful consideration in the report. The first is the thresholds for additional members of a household. It is referred to but there is no consideration of it. In particular, one of my concerns is that we have a growing number of adult children who do not want to remain in the family home after they reach working age but are forced to because of the rental crisis. There is no consideration of whether there could be some level of disregard for their income, given the fact they do not want to be there. Again, I have had cases in my constituency where somebody has turned 18 or 19, gets a job and puts the family off the list. In one case the family lost 11 years on the list because of that. For rent-setting purposes, I know income should be taken into account, but given those people will be living in that household on a temporary basis until they get accommodation, that is unfortunate.

Likewise with income disregards, I have never understood why people in receipt of the working family payment could be removed from the list. It is one of the things that even one some of the Minister’s own back bench colleagues have been raising for some time. I had a very sad case of a family who were awarded family income supplement, as it was called at the time, where as a consequence of that they were €1,000 a year over the list threshold, lost their list position, and then, because they had to pay the housing assistance payment, HAP, were much worse off financially. They will not benefit from any of this because they are outside the scope of the Minister’s retrospection. The family income supplement and the working family payment, given it is a recognition by the State that this household does not earn enough money to meet a basic standard of living, should be disregarded. I urge the Minister to consider that in his wider review.

The other issues I was going to raise have been outlined now by the Minister as part of his future review. I will, therefore, comment on a couple of those. I would say, however, that given that it took such a long time to get to this interim measure, I certainly hope it does not take as long to get to the end of the review. I am not making that as a partisan remark. The Minister was given the report of the review of the income eligibility in November of 2021. He has not produced anything comprehensive since then and has produced, as he has admitted himself today, relatively minor and modest interim measures. If it takes as long or longer to produce anything more comprehensive, the five years of this Government’s term of office may be over before anybody gets the benefit of those.

In addition, all those people who lost out in the meantime may not get the benefit of any of these measures and, therefore, time is absolutely of the essence.

One of the issues in the report that concerned me was there seemed to be an implication that when the report assessed affordability for low-income households just above the threshold, it used 35% of net disposable income on rent as a measure. That does not work for households which should be in receipt of social housing. That is why we have differential rent of 10%, 15% or 17%. I urge the Minister, in his further review work, to have a much clearer and more appropriate metric for determining what eligibility may or may not be, because some of the data on this are quite concerning in that respect.

Index linking would be very valuable. We should not wait another ten years for further changes. There has to be some mechanism, whether it is linked to wages or rents, or some index that could be prescribed by way of regulation. It would be very valuable to capture information on those two things. I also have no idea why a significant chunk of the section of the report on affordable schemes and cost rental is redacted. I have a strong idea of what the information is on that. It should be published for all to see. It makes no sense to me whatsoever. I urge the Minister to republish the report without redactions.

I am very disappointed that even in this interim measure, the flexibility we have called on the Minister to introduce with respect to the 12-month look-back on income assessments has not been introduced. Deputy Boyd Barrett and I have been working on a case together for a very long time. In this instance, that case would be resolved because of the raising of the thresholds, although this would follow a year of extreme trauma and emotional discomfort for the family in question. The 12-month look-back is badly designed, however. It is too inflexible and needs to be resolved. I urge the Minister to give greater clarity on it. At this point, some of our local authorities are applying a deliberately rigid interpretation to try to force the Minister's hand, which is a very bad way to operate. In the absence of the Minister introducing flexibility on that, it will a cause a problem. I am happy to discuss that at a later stage.

The Minister needs to come before the Joint Committee on Housing, Heritage and Local Government early next year - I will raise that with colleagues - and not just regarding this report. I understood the Housing Agency did some work on foot of receipt of this report. I presume there has also been some dialogue with the Departments of Public Expenditure and Reform and Finance. The joint committee should be given all of that information. Let us have a very thorough discussion of this with other Members, such as Deputy Boyd Barrett, who are not on the committee but regularly attend its meetings, to inform the Minister's work in order that the subsequent review to the review of the review he is now undertaking can be done in a timely and comprehensive manner. This measure is good for those people who benefit from it but many people have been left behind. The sooner we deal with those people the better.

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