Eoin Ó Broin
Dublin Mid-West · Sinn Féin · Ireland
“It is disappointing that, when several journalists have contacted the Government and the Department looking to confirm on the record that HAP and RAS tenants are not included - we know that they are not - and set out why and if that will be reconsidered, instead of giving a straight answer that, yes, they have been excluded, and explainin…”
“Will it try to remove survivors when they chain themselves to the gates in protest, as they have said they will, or will it finally listen to them and hear their calls for respect, justice and truth? Will it buy the Bessborough site and stop this outrage from happening?”
“According to the latest summary of social housing needs assessments, 61,000 households are on council waiting lists, although we know a large number of them are single people. About 49,000 households at the end of last year were on HAP, while there were about 7,500 private sector RAS recipients of the 14,000.”
“We are setting out five specific sets of circumstances where that would be permissible. Under our scheme, the person moving from Youghal to Clonakilty would have to have a specific reason like taking up a job or education in Clonakilty or accessing long-term medical treatment, etc.”
“First, importantly it would be for both people on the list and people in receipt of social housing support, such as HAP and RAS. It is not just the 61,000 households on our council lists but also the 55,000 or so households in HAP or private sector RAS.”
“Sure. I thank the Minister of State for his reply. My natural disposition as a person is to treat people at face value, but ten years in this House has made a bit of a cynic of me.”
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“So bad a mess of our apartment-planning system did Eoghan Murphy make that Deputy Darragh O'Brien as Minister was forced by the weight of evidence to do what many of us in the Oireachtas housing committee in 2017 and 2018 had urged Simon Coveney and then Eoghan Murphy to do, which was to revert to a situation where there was one set of design standards, not two, and where local authorities continued to be the primary decision-makers of planning applications, with an appeal to the board. As a consequence of him introducing under pressure what many of us had argued for for a long time, the number of JRs of large-scale residential developments plummeted. Now, thankfully, there are very few. The one thing the Minister of State and I agree on in this is we want to see fewer JRs.”
“Some of those JRs are still lodged in the courts because of the failure of Government to get a grip on that. The lesson is when bad changes are made to planning law, it does not increase the volume of development. The second lesson is that when bad changes are made to planning law, even if stuff gets built, the stuff is of inferior quality. These are people's homes. These are places where places are meant to grow, have children, flourish and feel safe and secure.”
“The first thing that happened was a series of conflicts between the Minister's statutory section 28 guidelines and our existing city and county development plans. When there are two sets of rules, planning decisions end up being fought out in the courts. Initially, Dublin City Council sought to defend, in relation to a number of highly controversial developments, its planning decisions and statutory plans. In a few years, we went from having virtually no judicial reviews, JRs, of large residential developments to having an explosion of them. When I first came into the House, it was unheard of for people to judicially review residential developments, particularly estate developments. The misuse of the section 28 ministerial guidelines created conditions for a slew of JRs. What was the consequence of those JRs? Stuff did not get built.”
“In 2018, Eoghan Murphy was the Minister for housing. At that point there was a very strong lobby coming from a section of the development community that apartment building was not viable and the problem was that design standards and building height restrictions introduced by our local authorities were making schemes non-viable. Eoghan Murphy introduced a series of section 28 mandatory ministerial guidelines on apartment design standards and, separately, on building heights. His justification was almost word for word the justification the Minister of State just gave, which was that if this got one apartment development built that would not otherwise have been built, it would be worthwhile. The problem is what happened after that.”
“Will he commit to sharing that information with our committee and giving us an opportunity to scrutinise it at whatever interval he thinks appropriate? That is the very least he could do to ensure full transparency with what is a controversial measure in the Bill. Whether one agrees with it is a separate issue we will deal with when we get to section 62, but some monitoring, publishing and accountability would be in everybody's interest.”
“The amendment is a device to allow us to raise the substantive issue, which is whether the Department going to be tracking this. Is that the Minister of State's intention? He is bringing forward amendments to the Planning and Development Act, a Bill on which we spent considerable time and have very different views, which was meant to end the practice of the constant amending of legislation. The reason that review was initiated, as the Minister of State knows, was that the 2000 Act had been amended so many times, it became unwieldy. Here we are and we do not even have the full 2024 Act commenced, yet this is the second amending Bill to it and there will be more. Will the Minister of State at least confirm it is his intention to ensure his officials report back to him over that two-year period?”
“How about just a little bit of transparency, accountability and reporting to the Oireachtas committee, which is part of our function, whether this legislation has good consequences, no consequences or, as many of us fear, negative consequences, particularly for the people who will be affected by the changes in the Bill?”
“It is because if it tracks them and reports them to the committee and if they do not have the intended consequence, we will highlight that the Government got it wrong. That is the real issue. I am not going to labour the point but I think the spirit of this amendment is one the Minister of State should endeavour to embrace, notwithstanding the fact that he opposes the letter of it. If not, we will continue to raise these matters and whether through freedom of information requests or parliamentary questions - which the Ceann Comhairle knows we are very persistent about - we will get the information one way or another.”
“The Department is creating a facility whereby people who have planning permissions will be able to significantly alter them in line with new apartment design standards, which are not yet law themselves, in terms of the planning policy statement before the courts. All I am asking the Minister of State to do - I accept he cannot accept the amendment - is to take some responsibility for the changes he is proposing and monitor them. If they have the intended impact the Minister of State is saying he wants them to have, he can come into our committee and say “Opposition, you got it wrong. We told you it was a good idea and it was going to work and here is the evidence.” The real reason the Department does not want to track these things is not because they are somebody else's responsibility.”
“This amendment relates to sections 62 and 63, which the Department hopes will result in an acceleration of apartment delivery. It is hoping to have an outcome but saying it is not its job to monitor whether the legislation has those outcomes but that of the Office of the Planning Regulator, the board, or whoever else. All we are saying is it is not unreasonable to ask the Department to track the impact of the legislation it passes to see if it has had the intended consequence or not. This amendment refers to the relevant sections. I apologise in advance if my technical proficiency is not as good as that of the Minister of State’s expert officials. These sections are meant to be about accelerating delivery of apartments.”
“Officials are put under undue pressure to meet unrealistic deadlines and the technical outworkings of the Bill are challenging. In the real world, the Bill then does not do what the Government said it would. That is a fact. This is a bad way to make legislation and if the Minister of State does not agree, it is something he needs to carefully consider because this will affect his constituents as much as it will mine. There are no votes to be got from technical discussions around planning legislation; I learned that a long time ago, but this stuff is really important and to do it in this way is the wrong way to do it. With respect to this amendment - and I want to pick up on the response to the last amendment - the Department is introducing a set of changes.”
“The idea that somehow the Minister of State speaking to an empty Chamber at the end of four hours in any way negates the argument that giving us just two hours, not having had an adequate opportunity to submit amendments after Second Stage. is the norm is just not true. From my long experience in this House, when detailed, technical planning legislation entailing changes to our planning codes - including sections of this Bill that I fully support, because there are elements of this Bill in which the intention is absolutely fine – is introduced in a very rushed manner without adequate scrutiny, particularly Committee Stage scrutiny in this House, unintended consequences arise. We have had occasion after occasion of this in the past decade.”
“The reason we have Second Stage, Committee Stage, and Report and Final Stages is because we come into the Chamber, debate the Bill, and consider the matters in front of us. Having done that, we submit amendments which are ordinarily taken with detailed scrutiny in Committee where we can go through details of the legislation. That is the ordinary procedure. What the Minister of State did in this instance was to publish an 83-page Bill of highly technical changes to planning law on a Friday. I acknowledge we got a very good, detailed briefing from the Minister of State’s officials and we have thanked them for that but we had an amendment deadline at 11 a.m. on a Thursday before Second Stage. The Minister of State gave four hours for Second Stage but the really important part after the speeches is committee scrutiny of the legislation.”
“I move amendment No. 2: In page 10, between lines 11 and 12, to insert the following: “Report on impact of amendments related to alteration of existing planning permissions 4. The Minister shall lay a report before both Houses of the Oireachtas every 6 months from the commencement of this Act detailing the impact of the amendments to Part 4 of the Principal Act related to alterations of existing planning permissions and detailing the location, nature and volume of such alterations by project and local authority area and the resulting commencement of developments that have secured the alterations.”. The Minister of State has been in this House for long enough to know it is highly irregular for an amending deadline for Committee Stage to be held before the Second Stage debate.”
“However, I think he will be able to accept the principle that if the changes the Government is making have the unintended consequence of increasing litigation and causing delay to much-needed critical infrastructure, housing or renewable energy projects, they will be monitored and, if necessary, legislative amendments will be brought forward to rectify those problems into the future.”
“I know the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, will not accept the amendment, but there are concerns that the proposed alterations to judicial review could result in increased litigation. My primary concern is that, as a consequence of the relevant sections of the Bill, there will be increased litigation and, therefore, increased delays. We are asking for the Minister and his officials to track how this operates over the next 12 to 24 months and report back to our committee in some form or another. I do not want to waste people’s time in having an argument about an amendment that the Minister of State is clearly not going to accept.”
“It is unlike the Bill we have just disposed of, in respect of which we had three dedicated committee sessions and were able to interact with ministerial colleagues and officials. While not successful in changing any of the Bill, we were able to obtain significant clarifications. Essentially, we are being given two hours to do Committee and Remaining Stages of an 83-page Bill. In this format, on the floor of the Dáil, it is incredibly difficult to do the work that many of us would like to do. I am not going to dignify the way in which the Government is rushing this through by attempting to conduct Committee Stage, because this format is not conducive to doing so.”
“I move amendment No. 1: In page 10, between lines 11 and 12, to insert the following: “Report on impact of amendments related to Judicial Reviews 4. The Minister shall lay a report before both Houses of the Oireachtas within 12 months of the commencement of this Act detailing the impact of the amendments to Part 4 of the Principal Act related to Judicial Reviews and detailing whether the procedural changes have resulted in a speeding up of planning related Judicial Reviews or increased the volume of planning litigation resulting in increased delays for residential and infrastructural development.”. This is a poor way of progressing a complex and technical piece of planning legislation.”
“I move amendment No.1 to amendment No. 11: In section 10B(1), after “person” where it firstly occurs, to insert the following: “or under section 10A, that a person shall not be provided with access to arrangements, assistance or accommodation provided by a housing authority by virtue of section 10(1),”.”
“These are free-standing residential structures and will have bathrooms, kitchens and a front door. They will share some services and road and pedestrian access, but they are dwellings in which the renter will have exclusive occupation. I suspect this will end up being challenged in the courts and the outcome of that will be very interesting. The bottom line is that a person who has exclusive occupation of a property they rent should be considered under law a tenant and have the full protections of the Residential Tenancies Act. Notwithstanding a separate substantive debate on the exempted development regulations will have next week, this is an incredibly retrograde step and one to which we are fundamentally opposed.”
“These amendments will completely strip them of any of the protections under the Residential Tenancies Act in terms of rent setting or capping, notices of termination and all of the other protections that tenants have. My concern is that not only will the Minister strip a group of renters of their rights into the future, he is also doing something that is contrary to a century of tenancy legislation. The definition of a tenancy for very long period in this State, before and since the passing of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004, is exclusive occupation of a dwelling. The whole idea of a licensee is that they do not have exclusive occupation of a dwelling. Rather, they are renting a room in somebody else's principal private residence and share their kitchen, bathroom, etc.”
“I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle and Minister. We will deal with the substance of the exempted development regulations when they come to committee on Tuesday of next week. Many of us on this side of the House have long argued for some flexibility in our planning code for family members to be able to provide free-standing residential extensions in back gardens for direct family members. That is a matter we will debate next week. From our party's point of view, we do not under any circumstances support the renting out of free-standing residential extensions in back gardens. What is worse about these amendments is that not only will the Minister permit it, those who will rent such dwellings will have no tenancy rights whatsoever.”
“It is something I urged the Minister's colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy John Cummins, to raise with him directly when we discussed it with him last week, to amend the circular to ensure every woman, or every woman and child or children, who desperately needs the social housing transfer protocol can get it, whether they are council list applicants or on the HAP or RAS transfer lists. Nothing the Minister said has convinced me of the merits of what is in front of us and on that basis, I am pushing the amendment.”
“In regard to the "two nights" provision, what about the weekend, a bank holiday or if somebody gets the initial two nights from a Friday and the decision-maker in the local authority is not back to work until the Tuesday after a bank holiday? The Minister is prescribing this in legislation rather than in guidance, with the necessary flexibility. Since the Minister raised the social housing transfer protocol that was published last week - something for which many of us have campaigned for a long time - it does not apply to about half of the households who will need it, namely, people who are currently in receipt of HAP or RAS but are not on the principal social housing waiting list or on a HAP transfer list will not avail of this.”
“The difficulty is, because they are in crisis, whether they will have access to the necessary legal support, advocacy support or documentation in the time period. With respect, on the safety net, the Minister rightfully keeps saying he wants to ensure consistency yet when you read the section of the amendment it states that the local authority or housing authority "may" make a decision to provide that safety net. That means we will get inconsistencies in decision-making right across the local authorities, particularly at the early stages of this legislation as people grapple with what is in front of them.”
“I wish to re-emphasise that my primary, first-instance concern is people who are legally and habitually resident in the State being wrongfully denied emergency accommodation and having no mechanism for appeal. The current situation is that they are assessed as being homeless. They are put in emergency accommodation and then a key worker or a local authority staff member works with them to provide the documentation to get the social housing support application in place or to provide the other forms of evidence that are there. The Minister has denied an appeal but what he has described with the review is not that dissimilar from the appeal except it is not founded in law. The applicant will get the decision to be reviewed by a superior decision maker.”
“Does it mean the emergency accommodation provided under this amendment can only open at 8 p.m. and must close at 8 a.m.? That becomes the operational procedure irrespective of, as I said, whether it is in the best interests of the child or is not appropriate for the adults. Second, the idea that the solution to not providing for an appeal is that somebody can just keep reapplying makes no sense. That just adds administrative burden for the local authorities, if such a thing were the primary concern. It also ignores the fact people who present for emergency accommodation are in crisis. At the point of application, they do not necessarily have all of the documentation to hand.”
“I am even less convinced of the logic of prescribing a time in the legislation. "Night to night" has a very clear meaning. It means a person does not get a placement of a month, six months or 18 months. It means accommodation is provided on a night-to-night basis. That is a long-standing policy that currently exists, and some emergency accommodation providers are paid for that. If the Minister had wanted to be helpful to local authorities, he could have provided guidance. The difficulty is that by putting this in legislation, it suggests that where the night-to-night safety net is to be provided, somebody cannot be accommodated before 8 p.m. The Minister has put that in the legislation. Normally when we ask for specific details in legislation, we are told it is not the place for them. That raises very real questions.”
“Where people have a legal entitlement to emergency accommodation or where a decision on the provision of the safety net is not favourable to them when it should have been, they should at least have the opportunity to appeal. If nothing else, that is something the Minister should change in the legislation. On that basis, I have moved the amendment to amendment No. 1.”
“What happens if we have severe weather events, as we often have, and homeless services have to adapt? We are putting this in legislation, as opposed to a circular or guidance. I do not understand why and I think it will create problems. Homeless service providers have expressed that as well. This is a disappointing case of a Bill that could have been relatively uncontroversial and could have commanded support across the House and across the statutory and voluntary homeless service providers. However, there are concerns and I raise them specifically in relation to the amendments. On that basis, I have tabled a number of amendments, along with my colleague, Deputy Gould, that seek, at a minimum, to ensure people who are denied access to emergency accommodation have the right to an appeal. That will create a more significant safety net.”
“There are times when there is a dispute between a local authority thinking an offer is reasonable, and it not being reasonable, for example, offering accommodation for a family outside the catchment area of the school the children are attending, when the family is unable to access public transport. These types of decision happen and they are enormously problematic. I also have concerns with the way in which the night-to-night safety net is set up. There is nothing wrong with this in principle but it is completely unclear as to why the Minister has times in it and why the emergency accommodation on a statutory basis is from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. What happens in winter? Are we saying people availing of this safety net will be left outside until 8 p.m.?”
“If we then look at the section of the legislation of these amendments that deals with removing somebody from emergency accommodation, and again, I am not against this in principle, we all live in the real world and understand that if, for example, somebody is behaving dangerously and putting others at risk, whether they be staff or other men, women and children in emergency accommodation, there has to be a provision for those people to be removed. That provision is there in practice but putting it on a statutory footing makes sense. I have a concern that one of the grounds for removal is that a person has refused a single offer within a period of 24 months prior to seeking emergency accommodation. The standard policy elsewhere in social housing supports, as the Minister knows, is that people get two offers before their file is suspended.”
“We have long experience of the real challenges in taking decisions around entitlements to State services and habitual and legal residence in the social welfare sphere. We know from that that it takes a level of experience and deep knowledge of the legislative frameworks in question. It requires a consistency of decision making. Therefore, I cannot understand why that appeal is not being extended. While we were told the Attorney General did not recommend it, that is not an actual answer to the question. The real question is why the Minister has not decided it is necessary and provided it? That is concern number one.”
“However, given that the Minister is creating an appeal in the main body of the Bill for people who are denied access to social housing support or removed from a council list, and these amendments create an appeal mechanism, rightly, in my view, for people who are to be removed from emergency accommodation on certain grounds, not extending that appeal to people who are refused access to emergency accommodation is fundamentally unjust. The consequence of this would be that some of these cases would end up in the courts. That is completely contrary to the intention of this legislation to provide clarity, certainty and good-quality decision making. I want to be very clear that my concern is not with the competence of individual officers in local authorities.”
“What are the problems? The first problem is that the decision to provide an appeals mechanism for somebody who is being removed from emergency accommodation, but not to provide the same mechanism for somebody who is denied access to emergency accommodation, is a fundamental oversight. My primary concern is that given the complexity of the decision making involved, a person who could have a legal entitlement to emergency accommodation, who could be legally or habitually resident, could be in a position where a decision is made to deny him or her access to emergency accommodation, and he or she would have no right to an appeal. Sure, there is talk of an informal review and depending on the decision making of the local authority in question, that person may have access to a safety net on a night-to-night basis.”
“Focus Ireland has written to us all expressing real concerns that these amendments could lead to an increase in rough sleeping, which is a view that has been echoed by the Dublin Simon Community also in correspondence to us this week. Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC, is a legal expert in this area and has raised similar concerns, as have others. These concerns may be wrong and may not be borne out, but the best way to do legislation of this kind is through the proper, Oireachtas scrutiny process where these things can be teased out and clarified. We had some really good engagement with the Minister in the three committee sessions we did on the substance of the Bill. The Minister allayed some of my concerns and confirmed others but at least we had that detailed engagement. We are not going to get that to the same extent now.”
“In fact, this set of ideas dates back to 2023. A policy briefing note was produced by the Department which was circulated to homeless service providers, statutory and voluntary. There was some engagement and then the proposition, as far as we understood it, was dropped from the Bill that eventually returned. When I asked the Minister’s officials on Monday why it has emerged at this very late stage, they said it is because of the complexity involved. I take them at their word: I do not doubt that at all. It is then all the more problematic that these incredibly complex amendments are going to get a very short period of scrutiny. We will probably end up discussing these amendments for about an hour as we vote on them. We will not get to hear from the homeless sector.”
“However, we have considerable concerns with the way in which this has been presented. I will go through them now and then speak in favour of my own amendment. Putting the legal and habitual residency requirements which currently operate for access to emergency accommodation on a statutory footing is not in and of itself problematic. I have said that consistently throughout. However, given the complexity of those issues and the complex interaction of Irish and European immigration law, as well as human rights law and housing law and policy, this is an area fraught with difficulty where one must get things right. I thank the Minister’s officials for the detailed briefing they gave us on Monday. This highlighted how these legislative passages in front of us are some of the most complex of the entire Bill.”
“Even that would have been entirely inadequate because, as the Minister knows, there is very considerable concern both from our homeless services providers and legal organisations which advocate for and represent people at risk of or experiencing homelessness, and indeed, the statutory body that is the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. This should have been brought in as a Bill and undergone pre-legislative scrutiny. It should have gone through proper committee scrutiny. The fact that it has not is really problematic and means the issues we are going to discuss are going to come back in front of this House at some point in the future. As I said at the start of Second Stage, when the Minister of State was addressing it, from Sinn Féin’s point of view, we are not against the principle of what the Minister is trying to do.”
“I move amendment No. 1 to amendment No. 1: In the fourth line, after “in respect of”, to insert “the denial of certain services and”. This will be discussed with this group. On a procedural point, these, of course, are not amendments to the Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill. This is a new piece of legislation. It was not contained in the general scheme of the Bill our committee did pre-legislative scrutiny on previously. It was not contained in the Bill itself. While the Minister told us he was bringing these amendments forward, the hope was we would at least get them at Committee Stage when we could have had more detailed scrutiny.”
“I cannot emphasise enough, and I think I speak for all colleagues in the Opposition who take our scrutiny role in committee very seriously, that to allow two hours for Committee and Report Stages for a Bill of 83 pages is wholly unacceptable. In that time, we have to try to discuss the Bill and invite the Minister of State to explain, clarify and, in some cases, justify elements as well as consider reasonable amendments. It is frustrating that every year, at the end of a term, this is what we are left with. I urge the Government to reconsider, although I do not think it will. Then we will decide as we go through the Bill next week how we proceed on Final Stage.”
“It has been confirmed to me today that it does not apply to women trying to escape domestic and gender-based violence who are on HAP or RAS. The only reason I am raising it is to urge the Minister of State to act. This is a valuable move. It is one of those rare occasions where I want to be able to commend the Government, but if half of the potential households that need this are being excluded, the Government needs to go back and fix it very quickly. There are times when we come in here and it does not matter how much scrutiny or how much debating time there is because we are not going to agree with the Government. There are also times when legislation is brought forward on which there is very little politics to be played and very few votes to be got. Planning legislation is typically that kind of legislation.”
“It only applies to households on local authority housing waiting lists and does not apply to households in receipt of housing assistance payment, HAP, and the rental accommodation scheme, RAS. Almost half the potential households that will desperately need this vital protection are excluded from the protocol. I understand that there are some challenges because those people are on the transfer lists of their local authorities, but there are no grounds on which a woman and children who are today experiencing domestic or gender-based violence, and who are in HAP accommodation, should be precluded from availing of the protocol. I see the Minister of State has a quizzical look on his face. I have checked this.”
“A shortened, time-bound, formal consultation with the sectors and our committee could help to strengthen them. There are some very real concerns about aspects of these. The Minister of State will know of these through his own backbenchers and because sectoral organisations are raising them. We want to get these planning guidelines right, and consultation is required. Today, the Department issued the circular to local authorities on the new transfer protocol for victims and survivors of domestic and gender-based violence to be able to move from one local authority to another and take their years on the waiting lists with them. This is something we have been calling for over many years, and I warmly welcome it. However, there is a problem.”
“It is noted that, unlike the publication of the draft policy statement for design standards, the Government has not announced any formal public consultation or invitation for sectoral organisations to make submissions while it is doing the strategic and environmental assessments - the appropriate assessment - and before they are incorporated into the city and county development plans. Nor is there any indication of whether the Government is going to request the Oireachtas housing committee to give its scrutiny to these matters. I urge the Minister of State to talk to the line Minister. Between the assessments and the reworking into the development plans, these rules are not going to come into effect until the end of this year, at the earliest.”
“I am not talking about reckless borrowing or no limits, but there has to be a conversation in government and with the Oireachtas committee about changing that ceiling and giving greater flexibility to local authorities to borrow. With the indulgence of the Chair, I will make two further comments. Yesterday, the Government published the draft planning policy statement for rural and Gaeltacht houses. Many of us had been waiting for that statement to be published for a long time.”
“Of course, the crazy thing is that for cost rental, local authorities can borrow from the Housing Finance Agency at a lower rate of interest than AHBs, so much so that when the former chief executive of the HFA came in front of our committee, he indicated that the difference in borrowing could result in a lower rent of at least €100 a month. Yet, despite the fact that local authorities could deliver larger volumes of lower priced cost rental, the borrowing cap that has been placed by the Department of housing and, ultimately, the Government on the local government sector is hampering it beyond belief. For example, Dublin City Council is working on the cost rental project at St. Michael’s, but that is going to blow its ability to borrow for any other schemes at any other stage. There has to be a sensible conversation.”
“On average, for example, 29% of the applicants for Land Development Agency, LDA, schemes are refused solely on the affordability grounds, and for the three-bed units, in many cases, it is as high as 50%. The figure is similar for the AHB sector. I urge the Minister of State, in the context of the increase in the lending ceiling for the Housing Finance Agency, to fix the problems with CREL. CAS and CALF have a separate problem, which is the inadequacy of the payment and availability agreement, or the management agreement in the case of CAS. That is going to become an increasing constraint on the ability of the AHBs to develop additional schemes and draw down the HFA funding that the Government is making available today.”
“The additional funding from the Housing Finance Agency is only of benefit if approved housing bodies, AHBs, through the capital assistance scheme, CAS, the capital advance leasing facility, CALF, and the cost rental equity loan, CREL, can scale up the delivery of social and, crucially, affordable homes in the time ahead. I am strongly of the view that there is an increasing crisis of viability in the operation of the cost rental equity loan. It was badly designed at the outset and, increasingly, delivering projects is proving difficult under it. What we also know is that the projects it is delivering are far too expensive for the overwhelming majority of people for whom cost rental was originally designed, those just above the thresholds for social housing and unable to access market housing.”
“The argument is going to be that this measure will help to activate apartment developments that otherwise would not be built. Let us wait and see. I genuinely do not believe it will have that impact, and even where it does have that impact, marginal and all as it is, it will have very negative impacts on renters in terms of size, quality and, crucially, cost. I would like the Minister of State, whether today or on Committee Stage next week, to talk in more detail about the provisions of the Bill that deal with the derelict sites levy and its interaction with the residential zoned land tax. That would benefit from some public airing. With respect to the Housing Finance Agency, HFA, that was on the cards and is very welcome. Here is the problem.”