Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This grouping comprises a set of technical amendments to the Affordable Housing Act 2021.

Amendment No. 55 creates a new Part 10 in the Bill and defines the Affordable Housing Act as "the Act of 2021" for the sake of brevity, while amendment No. 62 changes the Title of this Bill, so it is amendment Nos. 56 to 60, inclusive, which are the substantive ones. The amendments proposed to be made to the Affordable Housing Act are of a purely technical nature. They do not represent any policy departure from the Government's stated intentions under Housing For All. As colleague will know, the Affordable Housing Act passed in the Seanad without a division, and passed in the Dáil by 101 votes to eight. These specific amendments are technical in nature.

Amendment Nos. 57 to 60, inclusive, all amend Part 2 of the Affordable Housing Act. I will speak to these in advance of amendment No. 56. As members will be aware, Part 2 of the Affordable Housing Act sets out the legislative basis for the local authority affordable purchase scheme, which I am glad to say is under way and the regulations are published, under which local authorities will make homes available to eligible buyers at prices that are significantly below the market value of the home and derived from the buyer's mortgage-funded purchasing power. In return, the local authority will take a percentage equity interest in the value of the home equivalent to the discount from an open market value at the time of purchase.

As enacted, section 13 of the Affordable Housing Act defines how this equity share interest held by the local authority is to be secured and provides that it may be recorded by the Property Registration Authority. Again, this is a technical amendment. The power of the Property Registration Authority to enter inhibitions in the Land Registry is not new. As can be seen from the language proposed in amendment No. 58, it is a for the avoidance of doubt. Amendments Nos. 57, 59 and 60 are the only consequential amendments. They remove mentions of a burden in the Land Registry and providing for the entry of an inhibition instead, without changing any other aspects of the local authority affordable purchase scheme.

On amendment No. 56 and Part 4 of the Affordable Housing Act, this amendment inserts a new section 41A into Part 4. It makes no changes to the existing section 41 in Part 4, which already provides that the Minister may invest public funds in a special purpose vehicle which will assist with the purchase of new homes in the private market by taking a percentage equity share in the value of the purchased homes. On the advice of the Attorney General and following engagement with the Property Registration Authority, it was decided that it would be preferable to give an explicit statutory basis for two points of the first home scheme, specifically concerning registration and conveyancing. Subsections (1) and (2) of the new section 41A do for the first home scheme exactly what amendment No. 57 does for the local authority affordable purchase scheme. The rest of the new section 41A inserted by amendment No. 56 sets out, to avoid any misunderstandings, how sale and conveyance would work for a home that was purchased under the first home scheme.

Taken together, these technical amendments to Parts 2 and 4 of the Affordable Housing Act strengthen and improve the security of the equity share interests, provide a clear statutory basis for what is already addressed by contractual relationships, and seek to avoid any misunderstandings with the new shared equity model.Given their nature and purpose and specifically the improvement they will make to the affordable purchase elements of the Affordable Housing Act, I thank the Senators for their indulgence with this.