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.”
The complete record
Every one of 837 lines we hold for Eoin Ó Broin, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 3 of 17.
“This is a retrograde step that will come back to bite the Government badly in the time ahead, but as is always the cases with these matters, it will be renters who bear the burden of that. Notwithstanding all of those criticisms, and the Minister of State was not surprised by any of them, there is an obligation on the Government to periodically report back to our committee on the operation of these particular sections in terms of the number of alterations that are sought, the nature and detail of those alterations, whether they actually result in commencements of new homes, and the types, quality and price of those. I suspect the Government will not do that because it is going to be nervous about proper public scrutiny of the negative outcome of that particular policy proposition that it introduced last year and is advancing further here.”
“That is the view of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland and the Irish Planning Institute, as well as many professional architects and planners. As we heard in the housing committee only a couple of weeks ago, the irony is that the alleged savings that were to be introduced as a consequence of those inferior design standards have already been taken over by inflation. Despite the fact that renters are going to get smaller and darker apartments with less storage and communal space, the savings that were meant to be provided are gone and because the Government has decided to remove any protections on rent controls between tenancies, those tenants will be paying ever greater rents.”
“I am not against the idea in principle, but the Government is doing itself and the State a disservice as a consequence. I am fundamentally opposed to the amendments to Part 4 dealing with alterations to existing apartment planning permissions. As the Minister of State knows, I was a strong critic of the revised design standards when they were issued as section 28 guidelines last year and as draft planning policy statements this year, in part because they had all the same pitfalls and challenges of the former Minister, Eoghan Murphy's previous section 28 guidelines. They are not good standards for the development of good urban environments or good and well-planned communities. That is not just my view.”
“We raised this with the Department's officials during the course of our briefing. The utilities have been crying out for parallel consents to speed up the process for years. Whether they require foreshore licences or Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, licences as well as planning consents, there should be a single standardised format where those consents and grants can be applied for in parallel rather than consecutively, which is the case currently and adds considerable periods of time to the process. In principle, I am not against the definitions of material contraventions here and elsewhere in the Bill, but our committee did not scrutinise them and there was no public airing to examine whether those definitions were correct or would cause difficulties. That is a missed opportunity.”
“With respect to the amendments to Part 4 on the infrastructural task force, this is one of those areas where our committee could have played a useful role in inviting in external experts, such as the utilities, our planning authorities, the Irish Planning Institute and others, to give their views on these proposed changes to the Act. All of us want to see increased and accelerated delivery of critical underlying infrastructure, which these amendments broadly deal with, but also of public amenities and public services like transport, schools and health facilities, all of which are sorely lacking in those parts of the State where there is increased residential development. One of the big disappointments of this Part is that it does not deal with the thorny issue of parallel consent.”
“Given the resources available to the Government, it is not within the realms of impossibility that the number of judges could be doubled, they could be provided with some additional back room staff and support, and, crucially, the good practice guidelines of the court would be put on a statutory footing so that we would have statutory timelines for judicial reviews depending on size and complexity. We have statutory timelines for some elements of our planning process, although not as many as there should be. There should be for judicial reviews, too.”
“This means that if the Bill does what the Government intends it to do, we could congratulate the Government and say "Job well done". I would have no difficulty doing that, rare and all as such a thing occurs. However, if it leads to increased litigation and delays, as some of us fear but none of us wants, we would be able to highlight that. The amendments also ignore the fact that the biggest obstacle to the timely expediting of judicial reviews is that we only have three judges in the Planning and Environment Court. We need at least six.”
“With respect to the amendments to Part 9 on judicial reviews, and as I said when the Act was making its way through the House in 2023 and 2024 and during the pre-legislative scrutiny of the general scheme of this Bill, I am concerned that there is a real risk that this could lead to increased litigation and project delay. I hope I am wrong, but the only way we are going to know is if there is regular reporting by the Department to the Oireachtas housing committee to demonstrate the outworking of this legislation. I invite the Minister of State to discuss with the Minister, James Browne, and the officials introducing some reporting mechanism, perhaps every six months, to the Oireachtas housing committee so that we can track the progress.”
“How are we going to get our planning authorities to move into the space where they have sufficient time and capacity to develop these kinds of plan when the number of additional staff sanctioned so far has been substantially less than what the County and City Management Association, CCMA, told us in 2023 they needed? There is no multi-annual plan not just to employ, but to recruit the planners whom planning authorities need. While I have no objection to the sections of the Bill that propose to amend Part 3 of the Act, in the absence of a parallel and clear multi-annual workforce plan to train, recruit, attract and employ the planners that we need, it is going to be very difficult to achieve these objectives.”
“The real issue here, however, is that unless there is a proper multi-annual workforce plan to give our planning authorities the staff that they told the Government back in 2023 they needed, all of these new provisions will fall foul of the inability of our local authorities, through no fault of their own, to have the dedicated staff to do the plan-making. In my local authority area, we are dealing with the city edge project, which the Minister of State's officials know very well because they were before our local authority previously. We have just made some very ambitious decisions in terms of substantial extensions to Adamstown through material variations. There are new master plans on the cards for the coming years for Adamstown south and west, and Grange Castle.”
“There are lots of substantive elements in this Bill, which I am going to deal with now, and it is not lost on people, particularly the professional planners out there who have to make and adjudicate on applications, that the system is probably more complicated and cumbersome today as a result of the then Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and his successor, Deputy James Browne's poor efforts. I will run through some of the key general concerns I have with the Bill. The proposed amendments to Part 3 relate to plan-making, which was one of the areas of the 2024 Act that we were generally in agreement with. We wanted to move to more plan-making, including ten-year plans, to create a consistency between regional, county and local plans.”
“He then undertook process whereby he took a Bill of 700 pages that ended up at 1,000 pages long, with all of the amendments during 2024. If I am not wrong, this is now the second piece of amending legislation of that "once-in-a-generation" rewrite of our planning law, the purpose of which was to do away with the need for constant revisions and amendments. Are we going to get one of these amending Bills every year? We had one last year. It passed through the House and was much shorter than this one, which is more substantive. Sure, some of the sections of this Bill are corrections, but not all.”
“Not only is it disrespectful to this House, but it is deeply disrespectful to the members of the Oireachtas housing committee, of which the Minister of State was previously a member, because we are not being afforded the opportunity to undertake the job to scrutinise legislation from the Government, a job that we take seriously. There is also the irony that when the then Minister, Deputy O'Brien, announced in 2022 that he was going to do a once-in-a-generation reform of planning legislation, one of the primary reasons was because, in the 20 years following the passage of the planning Act in 2000, there had been so many amending pieces of legislation that the Act was unwieldy. It was too complex, cumbersome and difficult to navigate.”
“The legislation had to be revisited and reintroduced a year afterwards because of the mess that was made. When I say "mess", I want to very clear. I am not in any way criticising officials in the planning section of the Department because they work hard and do their job very professionally, but when they are put under unrealistic timelines by the Government, when they and the Members of this House are not afforded the opportunity to scrutinise and hear other opinion, bad legislation is made, bad outcomes arise and legislation has to be revisited. I say this about a Bill many aspects of which I am not opposed to.”
“This means that those sections of the Bill that were subject to pre-legislative scrutiny will not be subject to any meaningful committee scrutiny next week. That, in itself, is problematic, but there are considerable sections of this Bill that are new, that were not included in the general scheme and that were not subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. They will be the subject of no scrutiny whatsoever. We want to get the opportunity to bring in impacted parties, professionals and other experts to give us their views. The problem with what is happening is that we have a long history in this House of Government rushing through technical and complex planning legislation at the tail end of Dáil terms. Because we do not take the time to scrutinise such legislation, mistakes and errors are made. Substitute consent is the best example of that.”
“Given the complexity of the legislation in front of us, its impact on our planning system and, on foot of that, the impact that will be felt by hundreds of thousands of people, I have to say that what is proposed is wholly inadequate. The Government has allocated four and a half hours for the Second Stage debate. That is fine, but two hours for Committee and Remaining Stages next week to scrutinise a Bill that runs to 83 pages is wholly inadequate. The Bill was published on Friday last. As the Minister of State outlined, it is very technical in nature. The amendment deadline for Committee Stage it was 11 o'clock this morning, before we even had the benefit of the Second Stage debate. Earlier, the Business Committee agreed to the tiny amount of time allocated for the debate next week.”
“I would like to start by thanking the officials from the planning section of the Department who facilitated a detailed briefing for members of the Oireachtas committee on Monday. I am deeply disappointed with what I consider to be the disrespectful way in which the Government has introduced and intends to proceed with this Bill. The Minister of State said "With the support of both Houses and with your co-operation, I hope to have this Bill enacted before the summer recess." We will have no say in that enactment. The Government has already decided that the Bill is going to be railroaded through the Houses in a matter of days.”
“I am sure when the Minister talks to his own backbenchers he will hear that these real live cases are happening everywhere. There are three other issues I would ask the Minister to consider. The first is to completely get rid of band 3. There is simply no reason to have a third band. It is an out of date concept. There is an argument in the larger urban areas and their commuter belts to have a higher rate than a second band but I do not believe a third band is needed. I also urge the Minister to publish the research as soon as he can and, if possible, to engage with our committee, to not delay anything and to get the experience of committee members on the ground before he makes his final decision. Crucially, that decision needs to be made as soon as possible.”
“I again stress the urgency of this. The longer this takes the more families will lose their position on the list. I am dealing with a family in my constituency. Both are working and have had a modest increase in their income. They are currently homeless and in emergency accommodation through no fault of their own. They were recently given an offer of council accommodation but in the income reassessment, they were marginally above the threshold. We have had it reviewed, and the local authority has acted completely in compliance with the eligibility threshold. Those people are not only going to lose their more than ten years on the list but they now have no exit out of emergency accommodation because they simply cannot afford private rents from their own income.”
“That is having significant impacts on eligibility. I also urge the Minister to look again at the three month look-back income assessment. It is far too rigid. When there are significant changes in circumstance you are not seeing those being taken account. Significant one-off payments can be but not changes of income circumstance or of employment and that is creating real difficulties.”
“There really is an urgency to progress and conclude the work of the Department. I strongly recommend in the first instance that there is an immediate increase in the income eligibility thresholds. I am strongly of the view, and I know the Minister is considering this, that beyond an immediate increase there needs to be a more rational system of linking those thresholds to an index, whether that is net household income or some other independent index, so the thresholds track that in real time. There is a need to look at the disregards, and whether carers' allowance, disability allowance and certain other payments should continue to be assessed is a matter of some concern. There is also the issue of secondary earners. We increasingly have a case where adults are being forced to live at home because of the housing crisis.”
“As the Minister knows, a growing number of working people, as a result of very modest increases in their wages, are being removed from local authority social housing waiting lists when their means assessment comes under review. I know the Minister is looking at this matter and his party colleagues and backbenchers from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are raising it with him regularly. Will he give us an update on the review of social housing income limits and some indication as to whether it is his intention to act on it this year?”
“Again I ask when will he introduce an emergency response, above and beyond what he is doing, to start seeing the homeless numbers fall?”
“More crucially, those plans will not be based on objective need because they will ignore about half of the gross social housing need in the functional areas of the local authorities. There is no talk from the Department about better co-ordinating and ensuring the Minister’s counterparts in the Department of Health and the HSE provide the wraparound supports to sustain tenancies beyond where they currently are. Yes, the Minister or the Housing Agency is reviewing HAP limits but we have no idea where that is at. Of course, two key recommendations, namely, the need for at least consideration of the re-introduction of emergency ban on no-fault evictions and a referendum on the right to housing, are not on the Minister’s agenda.”
“The report called for the Minister to extend the youth homelessness strategy out to 2030. My understanding is that despite the fact the strategy expired last year, there is no intention to extend it. Yes, the Minister is working on the child homelessness strategy but there is no sight of it. Will it be out this year? Is there a clear timeline? Can the Minister confirm that? On the housing action delivery plans, it is still not clear whether that will specify not just the number of one, two and three beds but also, for example, very clear targets for every local authority for people with physical and intellectual disabilities as well as right-sizing requirements.”
“Crucially, the volume of social homes that is being delivered is not meeting the need. In fact, on the basis of the most recent summary of social housing needs assessments, it will take 55 years to clear current and emerging social housing need. People are waiting ten and sometimes 14 years plus. I would really encourage the Minister to put in place a plan because if he is to have any hope of ending long-term homelessness by 2030 there needs to be a plan with clear targets. That is not in place at the moment and that is why our committee has recommended the 14 points in last week’s homelessness report.”
“It is simply not the case that the Minister’s Department is already undertaking the key actions recommended in this report. If that were the case, we would not have wasted our time producing the report. Month on month, the number of adults, children, single people and pensioners falling into emergency accommodation is growing. That means the core recommendation of the report that we now need an emergency response seems to be ignored by the Government. There is an explicit call to fully reinstate the funding for social housing acquisitions, including for housing first and tenant in situ, and to remove the restrictions, something the Minister has set his face against, which is why the number of such acquisitions halved last year on the year before, resulting in many more people becoming homeless.”
“Last Thursday, the Oireachtas housing committee published an important report on homelessness. At the centre of that report is the call for the introduction of an emergency package of measures to prevent families and single people from becoming homeless, but also to get people out of emergency accommodation more quickly. Now that the Minister has had at least a week to consider the report, will he set out his initial response to its 14 recommendations? Will he let the House know whether it is his intention to bring forward an emergency response to finally get to grips with the ever-deepening homelessness crisis?”
“A case in point is that we still do not even have the underpinning legislation for the redress scheme for Celtic tiger era building defects. We were promised it would be introduced at the start of this year and be passed before the summer, with the Minister saying he hoped people would be able to apply for that scheme by the end of 2026. The legislation has not even been written yet. Deputy Coppinger is right; the two schemes for interim fire safety works and retrospective repayments are not working. Not a single retrospective payment has been paid to date, and only three schemes out of approximately 200 have got into the interim fire safety. It is utterly broken and needs change but this Government is not listening. However, I commend this motion to the House.”
“She had to find an additional €80,000 to cover the cost of her home, and that is not an unusual case. Of course, there is the ongoing bureaucracy and delay in decisions. I am also deeply disappointed that the Minister is not able to give us a timeline for the review. This review is crucial to fix the many aspects of this broken scheme. We need the Minister to tell us when the review will be, who it will be led by, what the terms of reference will be and what the outcomes will be. Without a timeline, we are going nowhere. This motion is sensible and reasonable. The defective concrete blocks scheme is utterly broken and needs urgent reform, but there is simply no urgency whatsoever from the Government. That is not a surprise. The entire history of the Government dealing with building defects has been a lack of ambition and urgency.”
“It is eight years since the Government took a decision to introduce a defective concrete blocks scheme, six years since the first applications were received, four years since deeply problematic, controversial legislation for a renewed scheme was rushed through this House and three years since that scheme opened for applications. How many homes have been fully remediated in that time? According to the Department, the most recent update from May is 527. In eight years, only 3,500 homes have applied, and about half of those have been approved. Why? This motion goes to the very heart of it. It is because of the uncertainty underpinning the science and the fact that it is not 100% redress. I spoke to a woman with a modest home in County Clare that needs a full demolition and rebuild.”
“I thank Deputy Charles Ward for bringing forward this enormously important motion, but also for inviting Sinn Féin and other Opposition parties to co-sign it, which we did with enormous enthusiasm. It is deeply disappointing that the Minister has tabled the amendment. In fact, what it says to me is that he is not listening to homeowners in the affected counties. What Deputy Ward and others have put in the motion is eminently reasonable. It is to encourage further scientific clarity to support homeowners. The gap between the Government's rhetoric on the scheme to date and the lived reality of affected homeowners is growing ever wider. The numbers do not lie.”
“Is the Minister saying that if the NTA is ready to go and commence construction in 2027 or 2028 he is willing to provide the funding or are we going to have to wait until we get the NDP review and maybe the funding will be released by 2030? All I am asking for is an actual date. The Minister had a long track record of misleading the House under his previous responsibility. I will not stand for it now, just like I did not then.”
“I would be more than happy to commend the Minister and welcome an actual announcement on the actual date the funding is going to be released. I would even write him a personal letter of thanks on behalf of my constituents. The problem is that he took a decision to delay a vital piece of public transport infrastructure for five years on a commitment given by his predecessor. Those are the facts. Yes, it is the first time I have come here, but the Minister knows I have been raising this matter with him since he became the Minister responsible, and I did so with his predecessor. It is a very simple question. When will the NTA have the funding? Procurement is going to take possibly about a year, then it is ready to go.”
“I think the Minister is misleading the House and the public when he tries to link the refusal to bring forward the funding for this project as a matter of urgency to infrastructural provision elsewhere in the system. Can he at least tell us----”
“The problem is that what the Minister has described is a very different scenario from what was promised by his predecessor, who indicated that funding would be announced and approved in 2025 and the project would be completed by 2030. From all the conversations I am having with public transport providers, I do not accept that the electrified depot capacity is the problem. My view is that the Government simply is not willing at this point to commit the funding for DART+ South West. That means the project will not start until 2028 or 2029 at the earliest and possibly not until 2030. The hard-working people of Dublin Mid-West will then have to wait another four to five years, which takes us into the middle of the next decade.”
“Will the Minister provide an update on when he intends to approve and release the funding for DART+ South West, which is a vital public infrastructure project for Dublin Mid-West? It is urgently needed and it is greatly delayed. Public representatives and, crucially, people living along that rail corridor were deeply disappointed when the Minister made the announcement last year that he would not honour his predecessor's commitment to approve the funding and have the project start as a matter of urgency. I would welcome an update on the matter.”
“I take the Minister of State at his word that he will work with us. The proof will be in the pudding and we will see him in committee next week to put that pudding to the test.”
“The Government needs to listen carefully to what we are saying, and to what the organisations, homeless services, legal services, NGOs and statutory bodies are saying. It needs to work with us on Committee and Report Stages to ensure that nobody who today has access to social housing support will be denied it, all things being equal, on the other side of the Bill; that the appeals mechanism is fit for purpose and makes good decisions in a consistent manner based on correct interpretation of the law; that the Residential Tenancies Act changes do not in any way undermine tenants' rights; and, crucially, ensures that nobody who has an entitlement to emergency accommodation will be denied it in the future or, worse still, is denied any meaningful opportunity to appeal a decision that could be incorrect in law and detrimental to their well-being or that of their children.”
“People should not be waiting nine, ten, 12, 14 years or more for social housing. That is the reality in many counties across the State. There needs to be an honest assessment by the Government based on the data provided by the Housing Agency in the summary of social housing needs assessment of how long it will take to bring down the waiting lists and to ensure that people have access to adequate homes. The Minister for housing is on the front page of today's Irish Examiner saying it is all about supply. That is not the right answer. It must be the right kind of supply in the right place and at the right price to meet people's needs. This is one of those occasions, certainly from my party's point of view, when there is not a deep division between what the Government is saying it wants to do and what we can live with.”
“It shows a marginal increase in the number of households on local authority waiting lists but also shows that gross social housing need is declining as the number of people in the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme and the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, continues to decline. If you do an analysis of the flows in and out of the list for HAP, it would take, on the basis of the delivery of social housing, new builds, acquisitions and leasing in the past three or four years, at least 55 years to meet current and emerging social housing need, all things being equal. Whatever about the political weight we have in this Chamber, that tells us that the current delivery and the targets for the coming years, even if they are met, will not come anywhere close to reducing the length of time people are waiting.”
“It is also going to require close monitoring by the Department and an annual review with reporting to the Oireachtas housing committee to ensure that what the Minister is saying he wants to do - and I am taking his word in good faith - is what will happen. We can have all the discussion we want about the rules underpinning social housing support. However, if the Government is not supplying a sufficient volume of social homes, far too many people will wait far too long. The summary of social housing needs assessment was published last week. It is an important document.”
“That is a case where an individual has been denied access to emergency accommodation where he and his two children have an entitlement to it. Under this regime, there is no right to appeal and no safety net. That is fundamentally unfair and unjust. I appeal to the Government to reconsider that. Correspondence from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, and others has raised issues about vulnerable groups, particularly those who have been human trafficked, that must be addressed to our satisfaction either here or elsewhere. The Bill is going to need significant written guidance and support for local authorities to ensure consistency of decision-making.”
“I understand that the local authorities are concerned that if there is a right to appeal a refusal of accommodation, it would create a challenge about ending that emergency accommodation. However, if we have already provided a safety net for those people who do not have reckonable residency, surely we have to provide something similar. We deal with cases all the time. I had an email from a gentleman in Wexford who was denied access to emergency accommodation on the absolutely illegal grounds that he did not have an entitlement to social housing support. As officials will say if asked, there is no relationship between an entitlement to social housing support under the 2010 Act and access to emergency accommodation under the 1988 Act. There is no issue whatsoever.”
“I would, therefore, urge that we get a briefing on those amendments as soon as they are ready to be published and get adequate time on Report and Final Stages to deal with them. The Minister of State has explained the safety net. That was one of my questions and I am happy with that. However, here is one of the challenges. I could be somebody who has an entitlement to access emergency accommodation but a local authority makes the wrong decision. I could be completely entitled under this Bill and the decision could still be wrong. Not only would I be denied access to emergency accommodation and left sleeping on the streets, but I would not have the right to appeal.”
“I am sure the Minister of State and the Minister would by sympathetic to making sure that is not the case. There could be a legislative amendment or guidance alongside this Bill. However, we need to ensure that the habitual residency condition, which must apply to everybody equally and cannot have exemptions or opt-outs, does not act as a barrier to Irish people returning home to spend the final decades or years of their lives where they grew up and want to spend that time. I want to talk about section 10. I am concerned that we are not getting to see these amendments on Committee Stage next week and the week after. I appreciate there are technical drafting issues.”
“The other issue, which I am sure gets cross-party support from the Opposition and the Government, relates to returning Irish migrants, particularly those who have been abroad for very long periods of time and would find it exceptionally difficult to meet the habitual residency test on return. Think of people who have lived in London for 30 or 40 years. Perhaps they got married and had children and a home. Perhaps their life circumstances then change and they want to spend the autumn years of their lives back where they are from but their families no longer live there. They no longer work there. Their pension entitlements come from the jurisdiction in which they lived for 30 or 40 years. There are many cases where those people find it challenging to meet the habitual residency condition or the local condition as it stands.”
“Of course, a social housing passport should set very strict criteria if people need to move for work, education, relationship reasons or healthcare reasons. I am aware that the local authorities are working with the Department on the protocol to address this issue with respect to domestic violence, and that is positive. This would be the ideal place to deal with that fundamental inequity in our housing system. This is relevant to habitual residency because ultimately people are moving their core centre of interest. I have an amendment tabled on this. I am sure the hard-working officials in the Department could do a much better job than me between now and Report Stage. The Minister of State knows my proposal will make sense. He should please talk to his colleagues and see whether it can be accepted.”
“Do they throw away their nine years on the list in Dublin, or do they move to Cork and take their the time on the list with them, which is not allowed? This is absolutely the correct place for this issue to be addressed. It was in Deputy Alan Kelly’s housing plan, rightly, but never implemented. It was in Simon Coveney’s housing plan, rightly, but never implemented. It was in the plan of former Minister for housing, Deputy Darragh O’Brien. It is not in the current programme for Government. My understanding is that it is not necessarily a case of opposition at political level but that the County and City Management Association is concerned about the level of administration involved in allowing people to move around the country.”
“The first is the long-standing issue of a social housing passport. We all know in our constituencies that there are people whose life circumstances change when on a local authority housing waiting list or in receipt of a social housing support such as the housing assistance payment, HAP. They might get a job in another local authority area or their children might need to attend specialist education or healthcare in another local authority area. They might have entered into a new relationship. Our current system punishes those people. If somebody in Dublin who is waiting for nine years on the local authority housing waiting list, or who is in receipt of HAP or rent supplement, gets a job offer in Cork that allows them to advance their career, they have to make a decision.”