Results 21-40 of 13,605 for speaker:Eoin Ó Broin

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: The more I listen to this, the more I ask, given that it takes between six and 14 years to get a social house, whether this is really about HAP eligibility. Is there somebody somewhere who thinks that there is a group of people who get HAP and who are not really interested in getting long-term social housing? Is it being suggested that they are the people we want to exclude from the system?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: I thank Mr. Kelly for the presentation. I have questions on Parts 2 and 4. If I do not get to the Part 4 questions in the first round I will come back to them in the second round. To go back to Senator Boyhan's original question, clearly the legal advice is that it would be better if there was a primary legislative basis to this conditionality rather than the circular. The question is...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: Has no analysis been done to underpin the decision to have this Bill in front of us?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: Has there been no analysis on numbers and volume?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: So not that Mr. Kelly is aware of. Obviously this is not just about residency, but the interaction of three different ways of thinking about residency - the legal right to reside, habitual residency and reckonable residency. A lot of the concern in the earlier section was about the interaction of those three, and particularly whether reckonable residency is going to be a determinant on...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: Is Mr. Kelly saying reckonable residency will not be part of the decision-making methodology of the local authority staff members in the way it is with social welfare entitlements, for example?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: Would it be fair to say that, at this stage, even the Department is not clear on how reckonable residency will interact with the other two concepts?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: That would be one case but I am referring to where entitlements to certain kinds of supports – in this case, social housing support – would accrue over time, for example by virtue of the length of time worked in the State or another criterion. It would not just be a case of habitual or legal residency but of accumulation. I get the sense that there is not clarity at this point...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: No, the three ways of thinking about it are very distinct. Much of the legislation is about transposing or attempting to transpose what is in social welfare legislation. In that legislation, there are three sets of interacting residency requirements, but here there are only two. That is what we are trying to understand.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: Which of the three residency requirements?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: That is the point at which reckonable residency comes into play.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: I will come back to some of these matters in the next round. In the meantime, I have another question. The Department is introducing the concept of future intentions. While social housing support is ultimately long term, there is currently no way of assessing, when somebody applies for social housing, what their long-term intentions are. In some senses, people's long-term intentions will...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: However, it is the future intentions that I am trying to get my head around because I am not aware of that principle operating anywhere in social housing assessments. What is the position if someone says his or her intention is to live for the longer term in the State, for example? It seems to be a very subjective assessment.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: But the one I have referred to is the one I am querying. That is the one I do not understand.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: In the case of those who apply for social housing, we do not attempt to establish their future intentions. That is not part of the current assessment for anybody. I am trying to understand what future intentions entail and how they will be assessed. Will the measure apply to all new applicants or only EEA applicants? That is what I am unclear on. I will contribute again in the next round.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: I thank our guests for their responses so far. Let us look specifically at head 5, new section 20A(1) opens with the words "In order to be eligible to be assessed". That gives the impression there is now two phases to the assessment. The first one is a residency assessment. If one makes it through the residency assessment, depending on which category, of which there are more than five...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: General Scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: Yes, that is assessed first and if one falls foul of that then the rest does not proceed. Am I right in my reading of the criteria set out here that if one is an EU or EEA citizen, with lawful and habitual residency, then after three months one would satisfy the long-term interest but for non-EEA citizens it is a five-year period of, as it says, "reckonable residency"? Am I right to read...