Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill, which has three Parts and 16 sections. I will reiterate what my colleague has said. It is completely unacceptable there was no pre-legislative scrutiny, notwithstanding that the largest Opposition party agreed with that. It was absolutely essential to have pre-legislative scrutiny. There was also no regulatory impact analysis published. Whether one was done or not I do not know. Neither were the heads of the Bill published. I see the urgency to this in relation to one aspect, namely, the registration. I have no problem with that, but this Bill is doing a lot more than that. Some of it is good and I have not had the time to examine my concerns about other aspects.

I speak as a person who spent 17 years at local level and watched a housing crisis being manufactured day after day from 2009. No public houses were built in Galway from 2009. I cannot say that often enough. Over the years we have seen what has happened with the approved housing bodies. They do great work. Am I happy with the number that are there or the regulation? I am not. The reason I am not happy with it is we see the fragmented nature of our public housing provision, which is split on every level, rather than the Government, through the local authorities, having the main authority, money, resources and power to provide it. I see that as the best way to tackle the housing crisis. It is one of the aspects. Over the years the local authorities did a very good job. However, they were starved of funding, starved of leadership and forced by government policy to rely on the market from 2014 and onwards when we brought in the housing assistance payment. The exact words used in Galway city were that it was the only game in town and we were to forget everything else. Between that and two more schemes I understand we are approaching €1 billion per year straight into the market, and we wonder why prices are going high. On top of that we have the whole other jigsaw of schemes, including the help-to-buy scheme, which has been deplored on every level by various organisations, but which the Government, in its wisdom, sees fit to keep going. Every single scheme has been designed to keep the price of houses artificially high to the point that with the help-to-buy scheme we are giving help to consultants. They do a great job and deserve a good salary, but it really is an indictment of our housing policy when we need to help consultants buy a house and that is what we are doing with that scheme.

As the approved housing bodies area was unregulated we set up the regulatory authority by legislation in 2019. I was on the public accounts committee at that time and was really aghast at the number of housing bodies, approved or otherwise, that had fitted into the gap to provide essential services. Housing is just one such service, with another being care. Imagine these bodies had to fit into that gap, described as charities or approved housing bodies, and were unregulated until this came along. The regulator has been functioning for two years now and I have taken the trouble of looking at its sectoral analysis. The figures on what we have done with housing are absolutely frightening. Some 58,184 dwellings are now owned by approved housing bodies. When this regulator asked them to register, it got a 96% response, which it thought was very good. It was a 96% response to answer questions.

The regulator points out a small percentage of the housing bodies - a total of nine such bodies, presumably including the Peter McVerry Trust - are responsible for or have 68% of the housing stock. The regulator points to the huge risk involved in having such a concentration in such a small number. Nowhere is that reflected or analysed in the Minister’s speech. I really do not expect Ministers to know everything - that is why we have pre-legislative scrutiny and committees. Those Members who agreed to waive scrutiny left us in a dilemma because we have nothing. We have nothing to examine. I have not had the benefit of briefings. Officials are very good at giving briefings, but we have not had any, nor any analysis or any way we can think as to what is happening with the further fragmentation of our housing policy. We are here to bring in emergency legislation, in part. I have no problem with that, but I echo what Deputy Boyd Barrett said. I am of fairly average intelligence. I can read and tease things out, but I am having a little difficulty understanding some of it. I should not have that difficulty because I always say my job is to explain it to my constituents and reassure them something is being done about housing. That job is becoming increasingly difficult. We have a concentration, and then a response by 96% of approved housing bodies.

We can look at the Peter McVerry Trust, which has not been mentioned at all. Obviously, at some stage the trust did great work and still does, but there are serious questions about governance. We thank the Comptroller and Auditor General and his office for producing that chapter. I do not know whether the Minister of State has read it. I read it quickly a few months ago. I read it more slowly on this occasion and it really is something. It is an exposé of the failure by the Department and the trust itself to monitor what was going on. The words “robust” and “strong mechanisms” are used. Governance did not exist. I will put this in perspective because this is one of the approved housing bodies the Government utterly relied on for the provision of homeless services. It has 2,000 clients and 71 locations, one of which is in Galway and has closed. I have no idea what is happening with it. The trust also has approximately 600 housing first tenancies. The chapter states “The Trust is the largest non-governmental organisation (NGO) provider of homeless emergency accommodation in the State”. That is something that should be done directly by the local authorities. What do we get out of this? The Minister of State should read this. He should read about the amount of money just this aspect of this approved housing body that deals with homelessness has cost us.

In less than five years, from 2019 to 2022, in excess of €140 million was spent. There is the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive, the Department and the trust. In November 2022 the Government approved exceptional funding of €15 million to this trust. That was on top of millions of euro given without the prior approval of the Department of public expenditure and reform.

I am not really here to give out about that but to look at what it takes to regulate any body in Ireland. We never, ever seem to learn and yet we are going down the road more and more of the fragmentation of the provision of what should be a basic human right provided by local authorities and with hands-on leadership from the Government in rolling those out. However, that is not what is happening.

This is just one example where we have completely commodified homelessness and put it out to this organisation. A sum of €15 million was given with no clear criteria or conditions as to how that money was to be used or how it could be clawed back if it was not used properly. This is from a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General, who is not given to exaggeration. I have never known a man as well as his staff to be more moderate when they write their reports. This examination was undertaken to provide a review of the Department's oversight arrangement in respect of funding provided to the trust. The report found fault with the factors giving rise for the need for exceptional funding, and the Department's monitoring of those conditions, and then it gave some of the background. I will skip all of that because I really want to get to what happened here.

During 2022, the Department conducted spot checks on 18 homeless service providers and one of them was the Peter McVerry Trust. The Department sought invoices during 2022 and was told there were no invoices available for the first quarter of 2022 but to come back again in quarters 2, 3 and 4 and invoices would be available then. The Department did not go back and there were no more spot checks conducted by the Department. There was no documented procedure for spot checks, as that is one of the report's recommendations later on. Imagine that we need the Comptroller and Auditor General to tell us all of this.

There were various advances to the trust but no record of approval of those advances. The protocol is that there should be approval for advances by the Department.

In September 2022, concerns had been raised with the Department by the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive. I will come back to this, because the regulatory authority does not seem to have picked this up. I am not laying blame on a regulatory authority but one would think, naively, that if we have a regulatory authority, it would pick up on something and that if it is not picking it up, why not, what do we need to change and what resources do we need to put in? This was picked up bit by bit by the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive.

A CEO retired and another CEO came in for a little while. It seemed he was so concerned that he departed after not too long in the job. What happened then was the Department recommended a former county manager to come forward and act as an interim CEO of the trust. Does the Minister of State know what he is paid per day for an interim job? It is €1,000. Following the resignation of the CEO on 11 October 2023, after only five months in the role - he or she obviously saw sense - the trust requested advice from the Department regarding a temporary replacement. The Department suggested a former chief executive of a county council as a potential candidate to provide short-term assistance to the trust. The trust engaged the recommended candidate who commenced on 16 October at a daily rate of €1,000. This was recouped, of course, from Dublin City Council which then recouped it from the Department and so on. I am highlighting all of this so we can see the money, and I will now examine the reports.

There are two reviews. The trust notified the Charities Regulator and the Approved Housing Bodies Regulator in July 2023, just over a year ago. It was a requirement. Both regulators have since launched investigations, so there are two investigations under way. On top of those two investigations, there are two reviews under way, one of which is by the County and City Management Association. There is the strategic review by the Department itself and an audit process commenced in 2024.

All of this has cost millions of euro and we have not housed anyone yet. We are waiting for the fifth review and report all to do with one trust. Then we find out that as of September 2024 the Department has not made any material changes to the protocol agreement. It was the inadequacy of the protocol agreement and monitoring arrangements that led to all of this in the first place.

The Peter McVerry Trust is one of the main providers of homeless services and the report's conclusions state that the controls, spot checks and quarterly reports did not operate properly. The Comptroller and Auditor General report recommends a more formal structure.

I will leave this issue aside, bearing in mind the millions of euro this has cost. A committee has been set up now that is monitoring the trust. The report is really worth reading. This all happened with one trust. Of the approved housing bodies, what was the figure?

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