Michael Finneran (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fianna Fail)

This amendment is not appropriate for inclusion in section 19. The section provides the general power for housing authorities to provide or manage the provision of social housing support and is essentially a restatement of section 56 of the Housing Act 1966. However, section 19 is more comprehensive with an updated power for housing authorities to provide what is now a broader range of social housing supports. It should also be read with section 10 which lists the broader range of housing supports, including specifically the provision of services for homeless people.

The proposed amendment seeks to include in subsection (4) a specific reference to the prevention and reduction of homelessness, but such an insertion is not appropriate to this subsection. Section 19 deals with how the housing authority delivers support, not the objectives of that support in terms of targeted households. While earlier sections deal with powers — for example, to acquire or build dwellings — subsection (4) provides that, in carrying out its social housing support functions, a housing authority must have regard to its housing services plan, as set out in chapter 2, but in particular the need to counteract segregation between persons of different social backgrounds and to ensure that housing authorities provide an appropriate mix of dwelling types and sizes and tenure types. This is an important provision in ensuring, in particular, that estates built by housing authorities have a good mix of house types for different sizes of household and are not mono-tenure. We are moving away from large-scale, mono-tenure social housing estates and, therefore, this provision is an important component of the drive to build sustainable communities.

The housing services plan referred to provides the platform for the ultimate delivery of housing supports and the new assessment and allocation provisions in sections 20, 21 and 22 give practical effect to this planning. It is in this area that the priorities are set for tackling the needs of different groups, including the homeless.

Section 20 is the basis for the new assessment of need and provides regulatory powers to set eligibility criteria and to describe and classify need, which will include homelessness. Section 22 provides housing authorities with a new system to ensure a better fit between needs and resources and to respond, as far as possible, to the expressed preferences of individual households. Allocations can be made to particular classes of household. In certain circumstances, a housing authority can allocate a dwelling outside the scheme of letting priorities — for example, where a household is displaced due to a fire or flood, both relevant in the case of homelessness, or some other emergency.

Under the new approach, each authority will adopt a new allocation scheme, which will allow for local discretion within the national framework. In this way, it is hoped to strengthen the link between local needs and the subsequent provision of resources, as well as ensuring consistency in the way in which applicants for social housing are prioritised.

As the Bill deals more generally with the issue raised by the Senator, I ask him to withdraw this amendment.