John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)

I join with other speakers in supporting this Bill mainly because it is further money being committed to providing for houses for the people that are on waiting lists for so long.

I draw the Minister's attention to the work of the local authorities or county councils because it was suggested by Deputy Gould that they should do more and I believe he is correct. They should be asked to do more. They were the housing authorities up to the time that the agencies came in, were able to apply for the money and took over their role. I want to see the councils do an awful lot more, and they can. They are in control of the housing lists, they should be able to access the funding at a lower rate and they should be encouraged to do more, provide more and account for themselves. That is what they are being paid for at that level.

I also want to see small businesses being supported to deliver housing projects. They cannot get money from the banks. They are trying desperately to play a positive role in the provision of various types of social and affordable housing and they are being excluded from the market.

Small builders who have access to a site and who have a track record of delivery should also be supported. We need to expand directly to the councils and directly to those small businesses.

A number of projects in Kilkenny are being held up by water infrastructure and Uisce Éireann. Uisce Éireann is almost reluctant to deal in a proactive way with those who are developing sites and are short of a response from it. We need to take out the red tape and bureaucracy. We need to insist the company also plays its role. I have a similar complaint about ESB Networks. It is simply behind the game in relation to the sites that are coming on. Regarding sites that are ready to be built, there are number of contractors in Kilkenny who are waiting for the plan on the provision of supply to the site from ESB Networks or, indeed, for the upgrade of the supply to the site. Unless somebody brings them in, explains this role to them and gets them working on it, we are going to be in a continued crisis in the provision of houses. It is being held up in these situations by red tape and bureaucracy.

I also want to raise the dezoned land issue. In Thomastown, County Kilkenny a site was zoned for, say, 80 houses. Of these, 40 were delivered. Delivery of these houses included the provision of all the infrastructure for the full 80 houses. The water, roads, sewerage connections and energy supply were all part of the first phase of the development. Then, lo and behold, the council came along and dezoned the land. Even though it was fully serviced and the developer built a road and handed it back to the council as part of the overall planning permission, it was dezoned. The 40 houses there are now beside a derelict site. The builder wants to go ahead and develop it. He should be able to do so. The only agency stopping him is the housing authority, which is Kilkenny County Council. It is absolutely farcical that this would be allowed to continue. Sites such as these should be identified by the Department and the local authorities should be told to deal with them, end of story.

I have also seen cases where older residents of local authority houses living in three-bedroom or, in one case in Kilkenny, a four-bedroom house, who want to downsize or right size for their own needs now, are not being given priority to do this. Among the houses coming on the market, it is difficult to get a one-bedroom or two-bedroom house. When someone who is providing back into the housing stock a three-bedroom or four-bedroom house asks for one, they should be accommodated.

The number of vacant houses in counties Kilkenny and Carlow is significant. I do not know why they are not being put back into use. When we ask the local authorities, they tend to rely on the lack of funding from the Department, and from the Minister as they would say, because they have to take the repair of these houses out of their own budget. We need to deal with this. We need to ensure that the repairs of a house, not in any extravagant way but the basic repairs, are billed back to the Department, to allow houses to go on and not affect the budget of the local authority. I cannot understand why this cannot be done pretty much immediately by way of a ministerial order or bringing the chief executives together and simply laying down rules for them.

The tenant in situ scheme was great. I cannot understand why it is not fully funded to the extent that it meets the needs of every local authority. I know of cases, again in Carlow and Kilkenny, where the tenant in situ scheme would work and would provide an ongoing tenancy in a house, yet the local authority does not engage. It just is not good enough. All of these may sound like small matters but if we begin to pull them out of the system, we will see that people will react more and deliver more and money will be spent in an efficient and safe way for the purpose of providing someone with a roof over their head.

At the end of the day the cost-rental scheme provides a house but it does so at the market value. I believed it was to be the market value less a certain percentage but, for example, a house in Kilkenny costs €1,200. The person going into a cost rental is not able to afford this kind of rent. We need to do more on this.

The case of women fleeing domestic violence is very serious. Local authorities dismiss it, to the extent that if the person fleeing domestic violence comes from a local authority house or a private house the they seem to stand back and expect the woman to live in this set of circumstances without the intervention of the local housing authority, which is the county council. I ask that the regulations on this be examined, along with the regulations on income limits, to ensure that people are given the opportunity to go on the housing list, be it for HAP or other supports, and eventually for their own house. The income limits have to be examined. There has to be flexibility allowed to the local authority to judge for itself. After all, it is a local authority. It is responsible for delivering the houses. Please let someone speak to the local authorities and unblock the various pieces of red tape I have spoken about.

I know for sure that Kilkenny County Council will have a huge number of approvals for the adaptation grant applied for between now and Christmas. However, it has run out of money. It does not have the money. It knows what it has allocated for and it does not have the money to fulfil the allocations. I ask that the Minister makes a special effort with all of the local authorities throughout the country which provide these housing adaptation grants, and which have at list of approvals with no money to match them. They should be given the money between now and Christmas. They should ensure that all of the approvals are dealt with between now and Christmas, and that the allocations for next year are based on the amount spent this year.

There is a lot of work that can be done without any legislation and without getting anyone into bother. I ask that this be considered. Deputy Gould made a great contribution, typical of someone who is on the ground working and who understands the experiences of the people he represents. Please take those views on board.

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