Minister vows to examine Housing Commission recommendations

The Housing Minister has pledged to examine and consider all recommendations contained in a damning report on the state’s housing policies.

Darragh O’Brien claimed the Government has already implemented many of the 83 recommendations contained in the report from the Housing Commission.

The commission was set up under the Programme for Government to examine issues such as tenure, standards, sustainability and quality-of-life within housing.

In a leaked report, the commission condemned the Government for spending a huge amount of money in areas such as long-term leasing, which it said has very poor outcomes for the state.

The commission said a new oversight body for housing is needed and called for the state to play a greater role in funding housing.

However, Mr O’Brien said the recommendation of establishing a housing oversight executive is “problematic”.

He said: “This one requires further consideration and, to be fair, the commission spent three years working on this and I have had it 14 days, so I think it deserves due consideration.

“What I don’t want to do is add additional layers on housing delivery, there is one recommendation I looked at and it is this executive body of the state. I think that in itself is problematic, it’s another layer.

“It’s not one that on first examination that I agree with. There’s a lot of other good things in it.”

Mr O’Brien said he will give the report due consideration and will be publish it on Wednesday.

He added: “There are a lot of interesting things in it. Some of the things, for example the 20% provision for social and affordable homes, we have done already.

“Another one is using equity schemes to help first-time buyers and, again, we have done that already. That’s been significant.

“Yesterday, I looked at the First Scheme numbers and just short of 10,000 are now registered for the scheme.

“The commissioners come from all different backgrounds and different standpoints and that’s good as you want different views to feed into it.

“We need time to assess the recommendation in more detail.

“It will take more than two weeks to examine the report and the impact of the recommendations.

“It’s important people see the full report.”

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald was critical of the Government’s long-term leasing policies by local authorities.

She told the Dail the Government is spending up one million euros leasing one unit from property funds.

“It’s incredible incompetence,” Ms McDonald added.

“But there is even worse. Fine Gael came to office in 2011 and since then, you’ve put nearly 10 billion euros of public money into the pockets of private landlords.

“You’ve done this through subsidies such as HAP (Housing Assistance Payment), Ras (Rental Accommodation Scheme), rent allowance and long-term leasing. Ten billion euro. That money could have been used, should have been used, to build tens of thousands of permanent homes for ordinary people.

“But instead, you pay out 10 billion euros to keep workers and families in the private rental sector with very, very little housing security.

“Housing supports are necessary, but they must be short-term and temporary. Not a never ending bill for the taxpayer.

“You’ve turned what’s supposed to be a temporary short-term support into indefinite, uncertain, insecure situations for so many people.

“Your commission has called for rental subsidies to be reformed, to make them short term and temporary supports.”

Taoiseach Simon Harris said the report will be published and there will be an opportunity to scrutinise it.

He accused Ms McDonald of being “disingenuous” about the 10 billion euros figure.

“You know well, deputy, that of that 10 billion figure, 3.2 billion of it went on rent supplement, 1.8 billion of it went on what we call the Ras, 3.5 billion went on the Housing Assistance Payment,” he added.

“Every single year, you could paper the walls of Dail Eireann with press releases and statements from Sinn Fein’s TDs asking us to increase the limits and asking us to spend more.”