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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“The reason is that the people in Leinster who were impacted by pyrite contacted the Housing Agency, which sent out competent professionals who inspected the property and agreed with the homeowners the work that needed to be done, and then, through a properly managed framework agreement, the Housing Agency employed the contractors to undertake the work. It is more efficient and cost-effective, and less stressful to the homeowners. Imagine being a pensioner in Inishowen who is on disability allowance and the Minister's proposition is that the pensioner has to project manage, procure and oversee the demolition and rebuilding of their home.”
“5 speaks to is the need for the Government to fully investigate the gap that is currently taking place between those folks who are remediating, what the grant provision is and what the actual costs to them are, and then bring forward proposals to address that. We have suggested proposals but we cannot table those amendments because they would place a charge on the State. This is, therefore, the only mechanism to do so. Amendment No. 6 deals with the other fundamental weakness of the scheme, which is that it is a grant-aid scheme. We all know the Leinster pyrite scheme was not a grant-aid scheme; it was an end-to-end scheme. It has worked exceptionally well, and one of the reasons it never gets debated in this House is that there are not complaints or problems with the primary purpose of the scheme.”
“5 points to the single most important reason, which is that it is not a 100% redress scheme. The scheme does not cover the full cost of remediation or the full cost of all of the ancillary charges that homeowners or tenants have to face when remediation is taking place. Until the scheme addresses that fundamental deficit, it will not work. For example, I have spoken to homeowners who are currently getting their homes remediated in County Clare. These are modest-sized homes, one- and two-person bungalows. They have shortfalls in the region of €60,000. I am talking to families in Donegal who have slightly larger homes, but they are completely standard homes in that part of the country, and they are facing deficits of €100,000. What amendment No.”
“Again, I am sure there is a slightly revised number that the Minister has available to him. Only 908 homes had commenced some level of work as of the summer of this year, and only 203 had been completely remediated. If we look at the estimates of the original expert group on defective concrete blocks, estimates that did not fully take into account, for example, social homes, additional private rental homes or non-residential buildings, what that tells us is that the scheme as it is currently in place is failing. Deputy Ward made clear from his contacts with his own constituents - my colleague, Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn, will do the same - that the people who desperately need access to these schemes are simply not getting it. Why is that? Amendment No.”
“If the revised scheme were better, if the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, had succeeded in fixing the problems of the original scheme based on secondary legislation, there would have been more applications. The most up-to-date figures I have by way of parliamentary question show that there were 1,644 applicants to the original scheme up to the summer of this year, but only 1,152 to the enhanced scheme. We also know that because of many of the deficiencies in the transitional mechanisms between the original and the revised scheme, a very significant number of homeowners are stuck in limbo and unable to transition. The really startling figure relates to the total number of homes that have had work commenced on the property and the total number of homes where full remediation has taken place.”
“If they are not addressed at some point, hundreds, if not thousands, of homeowners and tenants will continue to be unable to access the scheme. It is important to reflect on where we are with the scheme. When the Minister's predecessor, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, introduced the revised defective concrete blocks scheme very controversially in this House, railroading through the legislation and ignoring 80 homeowner-drafted amendments, we were told that the revised scheme would address the problems identified by affected homeowners and tenants in the affected counties. What is interesting is that when we look at the figures, the actual number of applicants to the revised scheme is less than the number of applicants to the original scheme.”
“I move amendment No. 5: In page 5, between lines 26 and 27, to insert the following: “ Report on gap between cost of remediation and grant under scheme 2. Within 3 months of the passing of this Act the Minister shall lay before both Houses of the Oireachtas a report examining the gap between the actual cost of remediation for eligible homeowners and the grant provided under the scheme. The report shall set out recommendations for reform of the defective concrete block scheme to ensure that it provides 100 per cent redress to all impacted homeowners.”. The purpose of these three amendments is to give me and my colleagues an opportunity to highlight some of the challenges and weaknesses in the operation of the current scheme. While they are not addressed in the Minister's Bill, it is an opportunity for us to raise them.”
“74, in my contribution to the motion of instruction that we discussed earlier, one of the things I asked the Minister was, given the fact there has not been any Oireachtas scrutiny of the building control amendments, and given that those amendments will require the Minister to produce quite detailed regulations on the regularisation process, whether the Minister will give a commitment to consult the Oireachtas housing committee on those regulations when they are in draft form. Will he give us the opportunity to have a hearing where we not only get to ask questions of the Minister and his officials but also hear from the likes of the National Building Control Office and the building control authorities?”
“It would be helpful if the Minister were to provide a little more context for amendment No. 63 and the circumstances in which those regulations may be used. What is the origin or intention of this amendment? This is just to help us fully understand its purpose and scope, and whether it relates to the more substantive issue of amendment No. 74 and the regularisation process related to the Building Control Acts. With respect to amendment No.”
“Hopefully, when the review of IS 465 is resolved, he will eventually realise that one of the many limitations - we will talk about those at great length throughout the course of the next four hours - of the scheme he is seeking to amend is that it is blind to instances where the deleterious material is in building materials other than block. This amendment, therefore, does not render the Short Title incomplete. It actually rectifies, albeit in the Title as opposed to the substance of the Bill, a significant limitation in the original scheme. This is going to have to change at some point. Obviously, it will not be now but it will change at some point.”
“I will respond to the Minister. It is clear that the Minister does not actually understand the significance of the amendment that has been tabled by Deputy Ward. The problem is that deleterious materials in concrete are not confined solely to concrete blocks. They are in poured concrete and other materials. One of the fundamental weaknesses of the original regulations and the former Minister, Darragh O'Brien's 2022 scheme is that they confine the issue of deleterious materials to block only. I know the Minister is not going to accept the amendment.”
“In the absence of that, I urge him to give us a commitment that the regulations arising from these amendments will be discussed in draft form with the committee so that we will have the opportunity to bring in third parties like the National Building Control Office and building control authorities to give their views on that to ensure we do not have a repeat of any of the kinds of defective developments that are currently taking place, not those pre-2014 but those post BCAR, because it is not working appropriately.”
“I am not against the idea in principle but I am concerned that those local authorities that take a more cautious and conservative approach to building control may actually interpret this section of the Bill in an unintended manner which would actually reduce the level of enforcement of building control. I urge the Minister to relook at that. I have been here too long to accept this way of doing business and I will not support this motion. That does not mean I do not support genuine attempts to improve building control but I will not be party to shoddily produced and rushed legislation. While I know he will not do it, I urge the Minister to withdraw the amendments and deal with them properly through committee.”
“However, the whole point of having committee scrutiny and having the opportunity to bring in third parties and people at the front line is to further scrutinise the legislation to make sure it is correct. I raised a concern in the briefing that we were not offered but had to request. I am very grateful to the officials for giving us their time today. I am particularly concerned with section 8(b)(4A) and the interaction of the requirement for authorised personnel from building control sections to inspect as part of the enforcement for the regularisation procedure.”
“That business model is to break all of our planning and building control rules, then fight it out through retention in planning permission and then fight it out in the courts, by which time the buildings are occupied and it becomes very difficult for a local authority, in the middle of a housing crisis, to have to force the evacuation of these buildings and the eviction of large numbers of families. That is the way these people operate. We have not had an adequate opportunity to assure ourselves that they will not be able to do the same with this process. I know that is not the intention of the departmental officials, and that is not a charge I am laying against them. I know they will have done everything they can to ensure this legislation is correct.”
“They are both well-documented cases of well-known rogue developers in breach of planning and building control requirements, and then utilising the weakness of existing regularisation procedures in planning to stretch out their non-compliance for years in some cases, while all the time buildings are fully occupied with people paying rent of between €2,000 and €3,000 a month, much of which is subsidised by the State through the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme. Those rogue developers have a business model.”
“I am particularly concerned that there is a very real possibility that the regularisation process will be got wrong and it will allow a small but growing number of rogue developers, who are already in substantial non-compliance of planning and building control requirements, to further game the system to allow themselves to evade full compliance, while all the time making enormous profits by charging tenants exceptionally high rents. I say that because I have a lot of experience, both in my constituency and elsewhere, of such developments, including Larkfield House on Coldcut Road and Chianti Park in Brittas. As both developments are before the courts, I will not comment on them.”
“I fully understand, from talking to building control officials, that much of what is in this Bill has either been requested by people on the front line or arises out of acknowledgement of weaknesses in the underlying legislation. I want to make clear that my criticisms are not in any way of the departmental officials who have been working on this legislation. This is a political charge against the Government for treating the Oireachtas housing committee and the wider Oireachtas with utter disrespect as regards our important role in scrutinising legislation.”
“We had a similar issue with a similar regularisation process, called substitute consent, a number of years ago where very significant legal challenges put pressure on the Government to put pressure on officials to introduce substantial legislation in a similar form to this and in a similar manner to this. Because of the way in which it was done, in the absence of scrutiny and the absence of time, the Government got the legislation wrong and amending legislation had to be brought forward the following December. I am hoping that will not be the case this time, but we just do not know because we have not been afforded the opportunity to do our job of scrutinising this process.”
“I accept it was in the legislative programme and pre-legislative scrutiny was done over at a year ago, but to throw this in in this way is entirely unacceptable. What has actually happened? The limited information we have is that the Government is acting under pressure from court decisions and imminent court proceedings. In order to fix a number of problems identified by building control officials this is being processed in the manner that it is. While the issue at hand is not the intention behind these changes and while there has always been a cross-party willingness across the Opposition and the Government to work together to strengthen our building control system in the decade that I have been in this House, this is not a smart way to proceed. We know this because we have been here before.”
“Yet, here we are in the final days of an Oireachtas term and a ten-page Bill - these are not amendments; this is stand-alone legislation - is being rammed through in the space, effectively, of an hour with no Oireachtas scrutiny whatsoever. There will not be any opportunity for our committee to engage with the Minister or his officials in public session. There will be no opportunity for our committee to listen to experts on the front line in the National Building Control Office or building control authorities, or indeed for us to undertake the necessary scrutiny of such important legislation. To thank us for our collaboration is gaslighting; let us be honest. Until last Thursday's Second Stage debate on the Bill, none of us had any notion that this was coming in, this side of Christmas.”
“I thank the Minister for his opening remarks. This is an entirely unacceptable way to introduce significant legislative changes to the Building Control Acts. Building control may not be a matter of huge media or public interest but it is absolutely essential to the well-being of people in their homes. We know that because we are currently dealing with the general scheme of the legislation to introduce a redress scheme for the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of homeowners and tenants impacted by building defects, a redress scheme that will cost the State a minimum of €2.5 billion over a decade, but probably much more.”
“The Government never stops telling us that tackling the housing and homeless crisis is its number one priority, yet in the housing plan that was published only a few weeks ago, there was not a single new additional measure to prevent homelessness or to accelerate the exit of single people, families and children from emergency accommodation. A winter ban on evictions - a six month breathing space - is crucial. It is not the only action but one of a number of actions we have consistently proposed. Not only am I introducing this Bill today on First Stage but Sinn Féin will progress it through Private Members' time as a matter of urgency. Then we will be able to see whether the Government is serious about tackling homelessness or whether it is just more crocodile tears.”
“We also need to see a doubling of the number of new housing first tenancies for those single people who are trapped long term in emergency accommodation. More generally, we need a dramatic increase in targets for and delivery of social and affordable homes, including the right kinds of homes for people who are trapped long term in emergency accommodation. That is more one-bed and more four-beds and lager five-beds homes. Not only do we need to increase the number of those homes but, in turn, increase the dedicated allocation for those trapped in emergency accommodation.”
“It is a scheme that provides a vital homeless prevention support where landlords want to sell the property to the local authority and the social housing applicant wants to remain in what is effectively their home. We also need Government to go much further. We need the use of emergency planning and procurement powers combined with new building technologies to bring on stream a dedicated supply of additional social homes, specifically for people who are in emergency accommodation, prioritising in the first instance the growing number of pensioners in emergency accommodation and families with children. The full detail of that outlined was outlined in the Sinn Féin alternative housing plan last year.”
“We need an emergency response from Government so today I am introducing a ban on winter evictions Bill, which is one of a number of key emergency measures that must be introduced now to address this crisis. The legislation, if enacted in December, would ensure no-fault evictions could not take place until 1 July next year. That would not only reduce the number of people entering homelessness and address the capacity challenges but, crucially and most importantly, it would give the Government some breathing space during which it could introduce the other emergency measures that I and many homeless policy advocates have been urging the Government to do for many years. The first is, of course, to dramatically increase funding for local authorities for the tenant in situ scheme. That funding was dramatically cut this year by Government.”
“What that tells any of us who are willing to look at the data is that over the next number of months, the number of families, single people, children and pensioners at risk of homelessness and, ultimately, entering into emergency accommodation will rise. That is totally unacceptable and nobody in this House should allow month-on-month rises in homelessness to be normalised. The big worry many of us now have is our local authorities and emergency accommodation providers are at near capacity. Very shortly, we will be back to the bad old days when Eoghan Murphy was Minister where families with children who are unable to access emergency accommodation will be referred to Garda stations, which, again, is utterly unacceptable. What do we need?”
“The most recent data from the Residential Tenancies Board indicates that from July to September of this year, 5,405 eviction notices were issued by landlords. That figure is up 35% on the same period last year and up 14% on the second quarter of this year. At the same time, contrary to what the Taoiseach has just told us, the volume of social housing that is being delivered is about half in real terms what it was in the 1970s when population and housing demand are taken into account. It is way below the Government's own targets, which are too low in the first place. At the same time as having inadequate provision of social housing, we see rents and eviction notices continuing to rise.”
“In October, there were 16,766 people, including 5,274 children, in Department of housing-funded emergency accommodation. Of course, that is not the true level of homelessness. When we include rough sleepers, women and children in Tusla-funded domestic violence refuges and all those people with status or leave to remain trapped in IPAS accommodation essentially using it as emergency accommodation, the real number of homeless people in the State is over 22,000. That is before we even start to talk about people who are sofa-surfing or living in inadequate and inappropriate accommodation. At the same time as having these unacceptably high levels of homelessness, we also now have increasing levels of eviction notices.”
“I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to make emergency provision to defer the termination dates of certain tenancies that fall, or would fall, during the period beginning on the day after the date of the passing of this Act and ending on 1 July 2026 in order to mitigate the risk that persons whose tenancies would otherwise be terminated during that period would be unable to obtain alternative accommodation; to make such provision on a phased basis to enable tenancies affected to be terminated over a period of time to assist in managing demands on housing services as a result of such deferred termination; and to provide for related matters. As the House knows, the level of homelessness has reached an historical high.”
“We were told the planning system would be clarified, consolidated and streamlined and then we were going to leave it alone and we were going to get away from the practice of month after month and year after year coming back and making more changes. It seems, on the basis of recent announcements from Government, this is less likely. Having said that, we are not opposing what is in front of us but we urge the Minister to provide in his concluding remarks plain English explanations to some of the questions I have asked.”
“I am interested to know whether, in any way, what is here in front of us will impact or assist the local authorities in this process. In his opening remarks, and when the Minister spoke to the committee, he seemed to suggest there is some relationship but I just do not understand. It is not at all clear to me and if the Minister would explain this, it would be exceptionally helpful. What I will say, and this is a more general comment, is that we were told by the Minister's predecessor, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, that the planning and development Bill and then Act of 2024, on which myself and Deputy Richard O'Donoghue spent enormous volumes of our lives over two years, would be a once in a generation piece of planning reform.”
“It is interesting that there is a Dáil debate and, again, this is a new procedure. In the Minister's concluding remarks, it would be useful to know why. Typically, when we deal with, for example, exempted development regulations in planning, there is a motion for it to go to committee, the committee scrutinises it and then unless there is something very controversial, the matter is just dealt as a matter of course by way of a motion without debate. Again, I am not at all suggesting that we should not have this discussion. I am just interested to understand the procedure. The most significant thing I would like the Minister to address is about when he wrote to the local authorities at the very end of July and set out both the new housing needs demand assessment targets as well as the increased 50% headroom he is requesting.”
“I just want to put that on the record. Obviously, the primary purpose of this change, as the Minister said, concerns the operative date for one of the transitional mechanisms governing county development plans and local area plans moving from the old Act into the new Act. The bit I do not understand, and I am genuinely asking the Minister to explain this in his concluding remarks, is what is the value? What do we get by changing that date? I am not questioning or challenging it. I have no reason to oppose what is in front of us. However, I do think a plain English explanation of what the benefit of this change is to the local authority in question or, indeed, to the process of material alterations to development plans that the Minister has requested and with respect to the new housing targets and zoning requirements would be very useful.”
“First of all, if I can put part of what he just said into plain English, as my colleague, Deputy Gould, confirmed with the Minister at committee last week, the Minister is using secondary legislation to change primary legislation. He is entitled to do so. It is set out in the Act. He has given a number of other examples. However, I do think it is very important that the public is clear that what is happening both in committee last week and here today is that we are using secondary legislation to change, albeit in a very minor way, primary legislation. That might not be legally problematic, but it is unusual. It is important that we do acknowledge the fact that it is unusual. I have been a TD for a decade. We have dealt with huge volumes of planning legislation, and it is an operation that I have never seen used before.”
“I do not know if the Minister is a cinema fan, but he may at one point in his life have seen Terry Gilliam’s futuristic sci-fi movie “Brazil”. Having listened to the Minister's speech and having read the notes twice before and watched back his interaction with the committee - I was sick last week so I could not attend - it is a little bit like something from the movie, which means that I have no idea what he just said. I am going to be very honest with him. This is not to challenge it; we are not opposing this proposition in front of us. However, there is a need when we are making important changes to law that we should at least try to explain them in plain English. I have some questions, which the Minister might an opportunity to respond to at the end if he could to help enlighten us and the public.”
“The Opposition, including ourselves with a fully costed housing plan, over and over again has set out exactly how it can be done. Unless there is greater State intervention and the right kind of private sector supply to meet the needs of buyers, we are not going to get to a situation where all of those people who have been failed by the Government’s housing policies get access to secure, adequate and affordable homes. As long as that is the case, we will continue to campaign, to highlight and to critique but crucially to set out the alternatives because the only thing that is certain is this: this plan will come and go like Deputy Darragh O’Brien’s, Eoghan Murphy’s and Simon Coveney’s before it. It will fail and the losers will be people in need of affordable housing.”
“I could not have found better words. It contains three new rules for rent setting and three new rules for security of tenure, and the only thing we are sure of is not increased supply, but ever greater rip-off rents and confusing and unenforceable tenure changes. Of course the Minister knows it does not have to be this way. His party leader - sometimes I think the man who is actually in charge of housing - the Taoiseach stood in this Dáil only a week ago and complained about the Opposition and said that we had no alternative and no detailed plans. He must have missed the Government’s own Housing Commission report with over 200 pages of detailed recommendations being thrown in the bin and ignored by the Minister and his predecessor.”
“Crucially, for all the Minister’s talk about private sector supply, new measures for the small and medium-sized builder-developer sector to build good-quality homes for working people to buy in every county are entirely absent from the plan. The only changes the Minister is proposing are the changes well announced to the private rental sector – reintroducing inferior design standards for apartments to make them smaller and darker; a €640 million tax break to apartment developers where the apartments are viable, being built and, in most cases, already have buyers; and legislation trundling its way through pre-legislative scrutiny of which the primary, if not sole purpose, is to jack up rip-off rents even higher from next March. Yesterday during pre-legislative scrutiny, the Bill was described by one stakeholder as "a jungle of confusion".”
“Despite the Minister’s commitment to working towards ending long-term homelessness by 2030 – I always thought the Lisbon declaration was to end long-term homelessness by 2030 – there is not a single new measure in this plan across its 100 pages to prevent homelessness or accelerate people’s exits from homelessness. Every time I hear the Minister, who normally is very cautious in his choice of language, talk about waging a war on dereliction, I am quite embarrassed for him because there is no urgency in tackling vacancy and dereliction in this plan. Transferring responsibility for the derelict sites levy to Revenue, which may collect it by 2027 is not a war; it is a snail’s crawl in tackling one of the most urgent and pressing issues of our time.”
“It is ignoring the Housing Commission’s estimation of the housing deficit, the amount of homes that are needed to meet housing demand right now, by a factor of about 20%. That is why the Department of Finance has said that even if the Government meets these targets, the housing crisis will continue for another decade and a half. Within that, the Government is chronically under-providing new social homes by a factor of about 30%. We need more than 90,000 new-build social homes over the next six years but we also need far more funding for the regeneration and improvement of existing social homes and a far more ambitious programme of social housing acquisitions. None of that is in this plan.”
“The definition of "madness" is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result and that is exactly what the Minister is doing with this so-called plan. It is not a new plan and anybody with a shred of honesty who has read it would say that plainly. It is the same old failed policies repackaged, rebranded and re-presented one more time but this time with far less feeling. In fact, the only changes in this document from those of the Minister’s predecessors are the reintroduction of policies from a previous plan that failed back then and without doubt are going to fail now. Let me run through some of the problems. The first and most fundamental is once again the Government is underestimating overall housing need.”
“There was a protest outside today by homeowners affected by defective concrete blocks from Mayo and Donegal, but also from Fingal. The homeowners in Fingal met the Minister's predecessor in 2022 and applied to the Housing Agency in 2023. The Housing Agency's report has been on the Minister's desk since June or July of this year. Can he tell us when he is going to make a decision because these homeowners desperately need some certainty about whether hey are going to be included in what is a very imperfect scheme?”
“The only reason he has done this is to try to hide behind that while he guts the rent pressure zones and forces renters to pay levels of rent that are simply unacceptable. The Minister has no idea if notices of termination will increase or decrease. Neither he nor his Department have done any analysis on the impact on rents or security of tenure. Landlords are unhappy. Tenants are unhappy. This will not work and who is going to pay the price? Renters. Because Fianna Fáil does not give a damn about them.”
“With the greatest of respect, security of tenure is no use if you simply cannot afford the rent. The family homelessness crisis started in 2014, not because landlords were selling but because landlords were hitting tenants with double digit rent increases. Over the space of three to four years, the number of children in homelessness went from 800 to over 3,000. As for the so-called security of tenure measures, the Minister is going to create three different types of security of tenure; for existing tenants in existing tenancies, for new tenancies in existing properties of small landlords and new tenancies in properties of large landlords. That is a level of complexity that will be impossible to understand and virtually impossible to enforce.”
“I accept there is a lack of investment, particularly in social, cost-rental and affordable for purchase homes. However, renters should not be the ones to pay the bill. What the Minister is proposing, in addition to inadequate and possibly illegal apartment design standards for smaller and darker apartments and huge VAT reductions for developers who are building apartments that are already viable, is to essentially allow landlords to reset the rent to almost double what it is for many tenants. He has not even done an analysis. Why not and why is he making renters pay for viability challenges the Minister and his failing housing policy created in the first place?”
“The House should note for the second time tonight that the Minister has studiously avoided the question. What do we know about tenancies? The Residential Tenancies Board tells us that the average length of a tenancy is three and a half years long. In the past 12 months, 70,000 fresh first-time tenancies were created. That is 28% of the total number of private rental tenancies. If those trends continue - trends that have been in train for a number of years - then within four years, the overwhelming majority of renters will be captured by this legislation. Many tens of thousands of them will have their rents reset to market rent at the start and all of them will have the market rent reset at the end of six years. I accept there is a viability problem.”
“The Minister has published legislation that is going to make the most profound changes to the regulation of rents in the private rental sector in over a decade. From March of next year, tens of thousands of renters, progressively, quarter on quarter, are going to lose the meagre protections of the rent pressure zones and over time see their rents reset to market rents. Astonishingly, the Minister's Department conducted no analysis of the impacts of these changes on the rents that renters actually pay. Why did he not conduct that analysis and how can he stand over a Bill when even he does not know the full impact it will have on hard-pressed renters paying rip-off rents?”
“Why is the Minister not accepting that in addition to not producing enough of these homes, increasingly they are unaffordable? Targets are important. They are particularly important for Government schemes funded by the Minister's Department. It allows him to plan, to programme and to be held to account. It sounds like the Minister has effectively abandoned the very meagre targets for cost rental and affordable purchase schemes that his predecessor had in his plan because this Minister knows that cannot be met, and rather than be embarrassed by his failure, he is simply ditching the targets altogether. Frankly, that is not good enough.”
“If that is the case, why would the Minister not say he has a target for new-build social homes? Again, this is a scheme that he funds and a scheme that local authorities and approved housing bodies deliver, some in conjunction with the Land Development Agency. It makes no sense to say that we do not need targets for cost rental and affordable purchase but we do for social housing. Again, it is a very simple question. There were clear targets for next year, some of which the Minister shared with us in the committee only a matter of months ago. My question, which the Minister has not answered, is very simple. Why is there no target for cost rental over the six years? Why is there no target for affordable purchase over the six years?”