John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to discuss an issue that affects people across the board and across all local authorities. I want to ask for a unified approach from government or a directive from the Department about how local authorities should approach this matter because it is different in every local authority. I am referring to the way people are removed from the housing list. I can only speak for my own area and what happens in County Louth in this regard. It is deeply unfair, and I have felt that it has been deeply unfair ever since I first got elected to politics in 2014.

Every year, local authorities need to make sure that they have accurate housing lists. They write to people to ask them if they are interested in staying on the housing list. If the person does not respond to that letter then he or she is instantly removed from the housing list, which is fair enough. Currently, where an individual can come back to a local authority and say that he or she did not update the local authority about the list or about a new address, or that the person may not have received the letter or had moved address but now wants to stay on the housing list, the person is allowed back onto the housing list but loses all of the years he or she had previously been on the housing list. It is deeply unfair that somebody could lose five, six, seven or eight years waiting for a council house because he or she had not replied back to one single letter.

With all due respect to local authorities, they have absolutely no proof that such letters get to individuals in the first place. It is very important that there is a unified approach or that some sort of a directive would come from the Department down to all local authorities to say how the standard should be dealt with across the board. If people are four years on the list, for example, and then discover that they have been removed, they should be entitled to the four years that they had previously been on the list, and should be allowed to go back onto the list with the same time that they had. This would be the fair thing to do. I ask that we would engage with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage so that a directive is issued right across all local authorities, and that it is not a different process for people in Louth, Meath, Cavan or Monaghan.