I thank the Minister of State. I thank the officials from the Department of housing for the two very detailed briefings they gave us on Monday and Tuesday and for the follow-on assistance they have given us to try to get our heads around this complex legislation in a very short time. The central proposition of this Bill is twofold. One is to take the existing eligibility rules for people to access social housing support and put them on a statutory basis, while the other is to provide an appeals mechanism for people refused social housing support, those who have that support removed or in other circumstances. We are not opposed to that proposition as it has been presented. The Minister of State will, though, expect a “but” here. There are some concerns. I think it is important that the Minister and the Minister of State listen very carefully to the concerns they are going to hear here and from others outside the Chamber. As we move through the Committee, Report and Remaining Stages, it is important that these concerns are addressed either by way of further explanation or, where required, amendment. We were not given enough time to consider this Bill before we came here. It was published on Friday. We did get the briefings, but amendments had to be submitted yesterday and not today, which is not ideal. Therefore, I do hope that enough time will be given in what will probably be two committee sessions next week to address the concerns the Minister of State is going to hear today. These are not just our concerns. The Minister, the officials and my party have received extensive correspondence from the statutory authorities like the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, and from legal experts, often working on the front line for those most vulnerable in our society, including the Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC, Community Law and Mediation and the Mercy Law Resource Centre. This is in addition to the Irish Homeless Policy Group. Its member agencies are made up of people who provide homeless services, as well as Threshold. I urge the Minister, Deputy Browne, not just to respond to the concerns but to meet those organisations, as I understand he has been requested to do following the National Homeless Action Committee meeting this week. I refer in particular to those organisations that have the legal expertise to tease out some of the complexities of the interaction of immigration and housing law to ensure that nobody who should have an entitlement to social housing is wrongly denied it following the commencement of this legislation. I also urge the Minister to work with us. The amendments we have all tabled have been made in good faith. Therefore, even when the technical drafting of our amendments might not meet the high standards of the Department, if the intention is right, I ask it to work with us over the next six weeks to get those corrected. The key test for Sinn Féin throughout this process will be a simple proposition. Nobody who today has an entitlement to access social housing support, all other things being equal, should be denied access to social housing support following the passage and commencement of this Bill. Nobody who is currently in social housing support or on a county council waiting list should have that removed, all things being equal, arising from the passage of this legislation. That is the bottom line for us. My understanding is that is the intention of this Bill and therefore we will work constructively with the Minister on it. We also need to ensure that the appeals mechanism, which I will talk to in some detail, is got right, and that the changes to the Residential Tenancies Act strengthen tenants’ rights and do not undermine them. I have a concern. We have eight pages of ministerial amendments. They were published late last night and, again, there is very little time to scrutinise them. Some of the most potentially problematic ministerial amendments have yet to be published, in particular the proposed amendments to section 10 of the Housing Act 1988 dealing with the provision of emergency accommodation. That was not included in the pre-legislative scrutiny. It has not received adequate attention from external bodies and, again, that is something we are going to need adequate time to address. What are the principal concerns we have? The first relates to section 20A and the application of habitual residency conditions in the State to accessing social housing support. I have no issue with that at all. That is the current practice, effectively. While it is not framed in that way, people have to be legally and habitually resident in the State and, indeed, in the functional area of their local authority to access social housing support. That is not in dispute. There is, however, a lack of clarity on the text of proposed section 20A(1), whereby all members of the household have to be legally and habitually resident in the State, and on how the section interacts with sections 20A(2), 20A(3), 20A(8) and 20A(10). These are exceptionally technical. In fairness to the officials, when they gave us their detailed briefing they themselves expressed the challenge in drafting those sections. The greater the level of clarity on this fundamental question as we progress with this legislation, the better. The reason I am saying that is the core principle that you cannot have a situation where the lead applicant fulfils the conditions set out in section 20A(1), and is legally and habitually resident, while children, dependant adults or connected individuals fall foul of them. From my discussions with the officials, that is not the intention for how those sections should interact, but greater clarity from the Minister on the record would be helpful in this regard. We also need to ensure that the impact of the changes on very vulnerable groups is adequately dealt with. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has made this a significant element of its correspondence with the Minister and ourselves. People fleeing domestic violence or those subject to human trafficking, for example, must be adequately dealt with, if not here or in our emergency accommodation system, then clearly somewhere else. This must not be palmed off to another Department in the hope that it will do something about it in the future. The second area I will talk about relates to section 20B. I believe the Minister has got it wrong. An appeals mechanism is eminently sensible but the idea of having a designated individual making appeals in all 31-odd local authorities is the wrong way to do things. That is not the way it has worked for our social welfare system and, therefore, there is a very strong argument to rethink this and locate the appeals office in the Housing Agency, for a number of very simple reasons. One is to assure full independence. I am not at all suggesting that more senior officials in the council cannot, under certain circumstances, overturn the decisions of officials at grade 4 or 5, but we have an independent social welfare appeals office for a reason and that principle should translate through here too. The second point is that the cases are going to be incredibly complex. There is not going to be a huge number but they will be at a level of complexity, as the Minister of State’s officials have expressed to us, in understanding the interaction of immigration, EU freedom of movement law and housing policy. Therefore, to build up a body of expertise to ensure good-quality decisions that are made consistently, it makes more sense to have a single place where an individual or individuals can build up expertise over time. Many of us are in and out of our local authorities regularly. They have huge constraints on time, recruitment and retention in their housing sections. I suspect that if it were asked to give an honest answer, the County and City Management Association would be more than happy for the office to be located somewhere else so local authorities could get on with the job of meeting people’s housing needs. What appears to be a restriction on the provision of new information in the appeals process makes no sense. In fact, if you look at the Residential Tenancies Board and appeals to its tribunals, for example, one of the conditions of lodging an appeal is you are meant to bring new information that might have a bearing on the case, similar to social welfare appeals. It appears from my reading of the text of the legislation that new information would not be admissible. That would be a mistake. If I am wrong, it should be clarified. Therefore, I urge that this be looked at between now and Report Stage. It would not require significant textual change but we would be better for it. The changes to the Residential Tenancies Act are broadly positive and I welcome all of those that extend tenants’ rights. However, there are a couple of problems. On section 17, the slip rule should not be applicable to statutory declarations. Statutory declarations are documents of legal standing. There is an absolute obligation on the signatory and the solicitor in question to make sure they are right. There is no definition of what the criterion for a slip rule is. Is it the date? Is it the signature? Is it the name of the landlord or his or her agent? Those things are fundamentally important to the legal integrity of a statutory declaration. This is a section we will be strongly opposing. I urge the Minister of State to change the notice period for RTB hearings back to 28 days from the ten or 11 days in section 30. The shorter period makes no sense and does not really speed up the process. That is not the primary delay. Giving a working person, particularly a single parent with a job and child, ten or 11 days to organise childcare, get time off work, etc., presents an exceptional difficulty. We have all dealt with cases where people, in advance of a tribunal hearing date, appealed to the RTB to delay that because they had very legitimate grounds for not being able to attend. That is being denied. Therefore, people need the maximum amount of time to make the arrangements to attend hearings because, as we know, when they cannot attend it is materially detrimental to them arguing their case. I do not understand the need for the transitional provisions. We probably did not get as much time to discuss those with the officials at the briefing because we were focusing on sections 20A and 20B. I do not understand why we cannot continue with the regime that exists and then, when the section in question is fully enacted, have the new rules apply. The reason I am saying that is because, if I take the Minister of State at his word, there is actually no change to the rules. From the current regime to the new regime, the rules stay the same. The statutory underpinning of those rules is fundamentally different but local authorities should be making the same kinds of decisions based on the same policy criteria. Why, therefore, do we need complicated transitional mechanisms? This is going to be tricky enough, and adding in a third layer of complexity makes no sense. When we go through the sections of the Bill on Committee Stage, I will invite the Minister to explain the rationale for them. If they are needed, I will be more than happy to revise my opinion, but right now I do not see any set of circumstances where they would be required. I will to talk about a couple of areas that are not in the Bill but should be, and then I will talk about the as yet unseen Committee Stage and Report Stage amendments before making my concluding remarks. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Sentiment score: 0.08