Martin Brady (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I value and treasure my long-standing friendship with him and wish him well in his role. I also welcome the opportunity to speak to the Bill.

The Housing (Miscellaneous) Provisions Bill 2008 will improve the delivery of housing services by giving effect to the programme of social housing and the measures outlined in the Delivering Homes, Sustaining Communities policy document published in February 2007. Current legislation on social and affordable housing dates back more than 40 years and has been developed in a piecemeal manner. The Bill will restore order to ad hoc procedures which have evolved over many years.

The Bill is driven by an overarching ambition to promote sustainable communities. Mindful of the role of government in setting down the broad thrust of housing policy, it gives housing authorities the tools and flexibility to implement policy in different ways to meet their specific local circumstances. It also reflects an ambition to strengthen local democracy by reinforcing the role of elected members in determining housing policy at a local level.

The Bill provides for a new incremental purchase scheme which will enable existing social housing tenants and households which qualify for social housing support to become owners of homes newly built by housing authorities and voluntary and co-operative bodies. This is a key provision. When one gives people something for nothing they do not take pride in or look after it. As has been evident in the case of local authority housing in Dublin over many years, people need to have a sense of ownership. In addition, large local authority apartment blocks and housing estates have been badly managed. While we often hear complaints about private landlords, they tend to manage their properties much better than local authorities which have failed in many ways over the years.

The allocation of local authority housing — an issue raised by Senator Coffey — is a major problem in the Dublin North-East constituency. When houses are vacated and boarded up they become a magnet for anti-social behaviour. Break-ins frequently occur and these properties become havens for drug abusers and a nuisance for neighbours. There are 5,000 vacant local authority houses in the State. In one case with which I am familiar it took seven months to renovate a house following its purchase from a private individual.

I am pleased anti-social behaviour is addressed in the Bill because the issue requires significant attention. Anti-social behaviour ranges from drug dealing, selling cars from houses, noisiness at night and general inconveniencing of neighbours. In some cases people are unable to sleep at night. The Bill requires home owners to take full responsibility for maintaining their houses, which is a positive development.

The incremental purchase scheme provides an opportunity for the State to extract additional value for the annual capital investment in the social housing building programme and will allow capital moneys to be quickly recycled to provide additional social housing without the provision of additional Exchequer funding. The Bill also includes important new powers for elected members to adopt strategies for the prevention and reduction of anti-social behaviour in local authority housing stock. An extended definition of the term "anti-social behaviour" covers graffiti and damage to property, which have become major problems in cities and towns. Graffiti appears to be trendy, with graffiti groups running competitions on websites. The Bill includes good, sensible measures which will assist us in achieving our objectives in tackling anti-social behaviour.

The Bill will broaden the choices available to those seeking social housing by establishing a more developed framework for contractual arrangements to secure rental accommodation for social housing. These provisions are based on experience with rental accommodation and involve housing authorities progressively taking responsibility for accommodating people in receipt of social welfare and rental supplement who have had a long-term housing need.

The Government expects to have rehoused more than 16,000 households with long-term housing needs who were previously supported through the rent supplement scheme. Rent supplement is a waste of money. Under the scheme a person rents from a landlord and his or her rent is subsidised by the Health Service Executive. The scheme does not give a person a sense of home ownership as the person concerned is renting somebody else's house. It is similar to a person hiring a car in that he or she does not look after it as well as if it was his or her own car. It was preferable when people were given their own homes and received support in the form of the rent supplement.

The Bill amends affordable housing legislation to remove any anomaly in existing clawback provisions. They were intended to apply only where affordable homes were resold. A clawback provision provided that one could not sell on a house for a period of five to seven years. I recall that in the Dublin City Council area some people who bought houses under such a scheme resold them a short time later and made a substantial profit.

The Bill will amend the law to enable owners of affordable housing, with the agreement of lenders, to re-finance or top-up their existing mortgage loans without triggering the payment of clawback charge. The Bill supports the creation of a flexible and graduated system of housing supports for those in need of housing. It improves customer choice to meet the changing requirements over a person's lifetime and strengthens the powers of the housing authorities as social landlords and regulators of social housing.

This Bill is positive, constructive and I believe all its proposals are achievable. The Minister of State, Deputy Finneran, comes from a rural area and is in tune with what is happening on the ground and I am sure he will take on board and examine all the suggestions made. I very much welcome all the provisions of the Bill and commend it to the House.