Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This suite of amendments relates to the principle of affordability. It is an issue that was touched on earlier. There is a concern that there is no clear definition of affordability in respect of this Bill and no such definition ties itself to people and what they can afford. I remember similar debates about the minimum wage legislation when the Low Pay Commission legislation was going through. I was not a Senator at the time but a civil society advocate. I highlighted a gaping hole in the Low Pay Commission legislation in that it did not deal with the question of adequacy. It referred to low pay as a market point and used it as a comparative term rather than tying the definition to the question of pay on which people could live. It is similarly important that the term "affordability" in this legislation means a price that people can afford to pay and not what the market could sell a house for, minus a bit. We must begin by considering what people can afford to pay.

I have tried to take a few different approaches to this issue. Amendments Nos. 24 and 25 refer to specific arrangements. The earlier amendments relate to the schemes as a whole. I have many views about what affordability should mean. In amendment No. 20, I set out that affordability should mean that a house is affordable to individuals with incomes on or below the national median income. A few years ago, the national median income was €28,500. When I worked with the National Women's Council of Ireland, the median income for women was €20,000, which meant 50% of women were earning €20,000 or less in a year. It is a good reality check to look at the median income because we know that half the population earns less than that. Affordable housing should be affordable to the bottom half of the population. The Minister of State might even insert the average income, rather than the median, in which case we would want to ensure that two thirds or three quarters of the population are eligible for affordable housing because we know that some very high incomes skew that average in Ireland. It would be appropriate for what I call the social base, the foundation of the State, to be able to afford housing. That is what amendment No. 20 is trying to do. I suggested that as a criterion under amendment No. 20.

In my other amendments, I hold back from suggesting criteria and simply try to prescribe that the Minister would set out criteria. In amendment No. 19 and more specifically in the consequential amendment No. 25, I am simply stating that the Minister should set out the criteria of affordability in regulations, lay them and agree them before the Houses of the Oireachtas, and review them from time to time. Perhaps they will need to be amended and the Minister should then take those proposed amendments before the Houses of the Oireachtas. That is simply trying to include clear criteria that would allow us to respond to what we know about how the scheme is working out. We must ask whether it is working and reaching those we need to reach. The Houses of the Oireachtas would, alongside the Minister, have a role in that regard.

Amendment No. 20, as I have said, is similar but sets the median income as one of those criteria.

Amendment No. 21 is associated with amendment No. 24. Amendment No. 21 is important. It relates to the discussion that the Minister of State has been hearing about the level of knowledge and local knowledge that exists in local authorities, housing authorities and their elected members. Those people have knowledge of their areas and communities and how they are being sustained or not being sustained. It simply says that notwithstanding any national regulations which may be set out, referring to the regulations I have asked the Minister of State to bring before us, a housing authority might specify additional criteria for the determination of affordability before entering into a specific agreement. That again ties it back to amendment No. 24 which requires that a dwelling be affordable to specific and eligible applicants who are nominated.

The Bill should not legislate for affordable housing in a general sense relating to the market, meaning simply that somebody could afford a house at a certain price. It should cater for the kinds of people who local authorities know are in their communities, people who want to buy houses, need access to affordable housing and want to remain, in many cases, part of the communities their families have been a part of for decades, or who want to be near their workplaces, or who represent large cohorts of a population within an area. There might be a local factory employing 200 local workers. There might be a hospital and the Government might want to ensure all of the nurses who work there can access housing in the area. Those are all realities. This is where I would suggest that housing authorities should be able to add criteria to any particular Part 5 agreements they make.

We do not want "affordable" defined grandly as a percentage below market value. We want housing to be affordable for a specific cohort of our constituency. This amendment would enable local authorities to add criteria before they enter a public private partnership, public initiative or local authority direct build which, as the Minister of State has probably heard, is my preferred option in many cases. I hope the Minister might consider these amendments. I believe they are constructive. They address one of the core gaps in the Bill, which is around the definition of affordability and people being able to see that this is going to work in the places they live.

I have spoken to amendment No. 25 already, and I believe I have covered the full set. This is about the criteria of affordability set out by the Minister or the relevant housing authority. I am seeing two layers. To be specific, I am not suggesting the housing authorities regulation of criteria would replace the Minister's criteria, but these might be additional criteria. If, for example, there was to be an affordable housing development, 20% of it could relate to a particular income quintile. That would be an example of a criteria for a local authority. If, for example, a huge cohort of people are working in an area, the 500 people working in that particular factory would be able to afford the housing in that area. This is an example of some criteria a local authority may add on top of the baseline criteria the Minister might set.