Sharon Keogan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

A national issue was highlighted last week in Laois County Council.Councillor Aisling Moran undertook Trojan work examining three decades of social housing costs, comparing homes delivered directly by the council with those delivered through approved housing bodies. What she uncovered was startling. If the approved housing body model operates as presented, our nation has drifted into financial madness.

We now have a Government that refuses to trust its own local councils to build homes. Instead, we are left with a system where the State gives a loan to a housing body, not repayable for 30 years, and then pays the same housing body every single month via the councils so that it can help to repay the loan the State gave it in the first place. Imagine lending someone money and then paying them to pay you back, and calling it innovation. It would be laughable if it were not costing the taxpayer a fortune.

Let us call out the next layer of absurdity. On top of these guaranteed State payments, the housing bodies also collect rent from the tenants, many of whom rely on social welfare. That is two income streams for one home. To top it all off, the approved housing bodies are then permitted to sell the properties after 30 years. Meanwhile, the councils, the very bodies that once built entire towns, are forced to stand back and watch this circus unfold, unable to lay a single brick, because these approved housing body projects have swallowed up all the available builders.

Is any of this cheaper? Councillor Moran’s figures, even though they apply only to Laois, are shocking. Through approved housing bodies, the council paid up to €1 million per property. When the council built or purchased directly, the cost was close to €250,000.

If any of this is true, it is a total and utter scandal. We must have a proper debate and an intensive investigation into this issue. Where are our national media and investigative journalists when it comes to these approved housing bodies? We have 550 of them.