Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Taoiseach. I am my party’s spokesperson on housing and there are one or two issues about which I am very concerned. We have had four months of meetings with the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Coveney. Arising from those meetings, we have been told there is an 84-point action plan. One of the only two results to emerge from those meetings is that the pre-planning and planning process will be hastened for local authorities that are building over 100 houses. That is miles down the road and we are in a crisis. The other result relates to the new housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme, which is not working. It is a rental scheme that all local authorities are introducing. People are given more rent to help with their rent allowance but many landlords are increasing the rent with the result that there is no balance. Unless these problems are addressed, we will not solve the housing crisis.

In my local authority area, Carlow, there is a cap of €27,500 and anyone who earns more than that does not qualify for the local authority housing list. Every local authority has set up a new rent scheme and everybody has been reassessed. Many of the people I deal with do not qualify for the local authority housing list and are becoming homeless. We are not addressing the key issues to help people get homes.

The new tenant purchase scheme introduced in the past four months allows only 50% of tenants to buy their houses. The other 50% - either because they do not work, because they are in receipt of illness benefit or because they are retired - cannot qualify for this new scheme. Apart from these two initiatives, what else on the 84-point plan has been done to help homeless people?

The local authorities are preparing their budgets. Carlow is very small. The town council has been abolished and there have been extra costs for the land aggregation scheme for local authorities. In addition, rates and utility payments from the local enterprise boards have been lost. It is small county which cannot pass a budget because it does not have the proper funding coming in. I have spoken to the Minister about this. If a plan is not put in place to help the local authorities that require assistance, the ordinary Joe Soap on the road will suffer when library services, parks and road maintenance are cut. We need to ensure that everybody gets fair play and that the Taoiseach will help the local authorities that come to him asking for help to reach some agreement. I understand that it is very hard to give so much capital funding to local authorities but the Taoiseach needs to make an agreement with them because the working person will suffer the cuts.