Richard Boyd Barrett Questions Burden on AHBs over Social Housing

I'm not deeply acquainted, to be honest, with the background to this, but I get the general trust of it. You're in existence since 2003, is that right? I'm just trying to understand, why do you think that you ended up non-compliant? I've had a concern about the government's policy in over-relying on the AHB sector to ramp up social housing. In fact, I'm pretty sure I remember talking to AHBs probably a decade ago when we were talking about all this, where the AHBs themselves expressed concerns about their capacity to do what the government was asking them to do. Maybe you don't want to say this because you're putting your hands up and saying, we have some problems, the report is accurate in terms of non-compliance, but this is actually the consequence of too big of a burden being put on the AHBs. Am I anywhere even close to the truth there? Deputy, in terms of delivery of social housing, I think it is important that both local authorities and approved housing bodies are delivering the housing, and we do need more social housing. So I think it is important to ensure that we have an approved housing body sector that has got the capacity and the capabilities to deliver. In conjunction with local authorities, I think we have to get the balance right between AHBs and local authorities. The area of capacity and what can an AHB deliver, it has been getting a lot more attention in recent years, and that is beneficial. In terms of setting up the approved housing body regulator, the sector looked for regulation. In fairness, the Department of Housing, they established the regulator, and the regulator is now up and running in terms of this assessment being carried out by Circle. It is the second assessment undertaken by the regulator. I think provided we resource the regulator properly, it will assist in even pushing the approved housing bodies to ensure not to be getting into areas that they can't be getting into. Am I right in saying what you are identifying is construction? Is it that you shouldn't be constructing, you should be buying? Is that a noted reference to moving from construction to acquisition? Yes. Currently we have stopped two construction projects because they cause us a great amount of difficulty. Where are they? What we are doing in relation to those, one is in Santry, in Fingal County Council, and the other one is in Marrowbourne Lane in Dublin City. In both cases, the deputy were looking to transfer the sites to two different approved housing bodies to complete. Because you don't feel you have the capacity to do it? Not currently, no. Into the future, when we build up our financial strength again, we will be able to undertake construction projects, but it might be a situation that it is one at a time. Why is your financial strength less than it needs to be? I just want to understand that. Why is that the case? It was because as we were expanding in terms of delivering more housing, we hadn't ensured that we had sufficient financial capacity to undertake. There is a level of risk any organisation can take, and we hadn't got the capacity to undertake that risk. Just purely coming down to Santry and Marrowbourne Lane, in hindsight it would be more prudent to just focus on one and get that completed before we get into a second project. That does seem to lend a little bit of weight to my concern, which is there is too much of a burden being imposed. You are saying there needs to be a balance between the two and so on. Certainly when I look at my area, the vast majority of the new social housing that is being delivered in Dun Laoghaire is from AHBs. I ask, why? I have no problem with AHBs being part of the mix, but it seems to be that they are now being forced to, or for some reason the government policy seems to be substituting the AHBs for local authorities. The balance should be the other way around. The ones that should be delivering most of the projects in my and every area should be the local authorities. Surely they are better equipped and have the capacity to take on the scale of stuff that needs to be done, while you guys can play a part in that. Maybe you don't want to say this, but there is too much burden being imposed on the AHBs, is there? I will ask John if he wants to add to this. In my own view, there has to be a balance between delivery by local authorities and delivery by approved housing bodies. Local authorities, financially, often have a much more significant capacity. One of the advantages of approved housing bodies is that their business is in housing. They build up the expertise in housing, so they are important. I am not saying that they haven't got sufficient capacity, but we need to get a balance between the amount delivered by approved housing bodies and by local authorities. If the capacity for appropriate development isn't there, it should be undertaken by local authorities. Take, for example, the Santry development we talked about. We are talking to another approved housing body. We are also talking to Fingal County Council, who is the most appropriate organisation to take on this project. Was there anything you wanted to add on that, John? First of all, I agree with John in terms of the balance that is required. I think it is being recognised that the volume of housing that is required for the state, both social and private and affordable, is so significant that one sector can't deliver it on its own. There should be a balance between the two. I think the approved housing bodies strategy forum that was reporting recently demonstrates that that mix should include others as well, like the LDA and the private sector in some respects. There is a mix required to get to the levels that we need. John is right. It is about ensuring that the capacity is built up in the right places at the right time to be able to deliver these things. That is one of the things that we, unfortunately, didn't get to the right position in order to be able to continue. We do intend at some point to return to it, but it will be at a point where we have built the capacity and the reserves to be able to do so.