Social Housing Passport Bill 2026: Second Stage [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-09
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Eoin Ó Broin (SF), Dublin Mid-West

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. When I see the timed amendment, given the fact that a commitment was made by three previous Ministers to introduce the social housing passport over a period of 14 years there was clearly plenty of time to have considered those matters. The Minister of State and I also know it is normal for legislation to be passed in this House but for another 12 months to be required for regulations before the intent of that legislation becomes operational. However, I will put my cynicism to one side and genuinely engage with him at face value. Let us test this over the next 12 months. I will respond constructively to a number of the issues he has raised.
First, it is obviously the case that different local authorities operate different allocation schemes. We have three different bands of income eligibility for social housing and different local authorities have a mixture of time on list or priority. It is quite a complex system. We also have a situation where there already are opportunities for people to move within local authorities or across local authorities, such as HAP crossovers where those issues are addressed simply. When you move from HAP in the local authority whose list you are on to HAP in a neighbouring local authority, you accept the fact that the HAP rates in that neighbouring local authority could be lower. That is the fact of moving from one administrative arrangement to another. Likewise, Dublin City Council has six or more areas of choice. I find its system probably one of the most complicated in the country. People move from area of choice to another over the lifetime of their wait for social housing. That means as a consequence that people can move down the list as well as up. That issue of potential inequity the Minister of State mentioned is already part of our system and it would have been part of his own system prior to the creation of a single area of choice. The real inequity of course is somebody having to lose their time on list to move to another local authority. That is the fundamental question here. While I appreciate his Clonakilty and Youghal example has some relevance, we are not proposing that people can do what is currently possible in Cork. He knows that and has been clear about that. 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. It is much more specific and much less likely to create some of the tensions he mentioned. Of course, we used to have intercounty transfers, and we used to have intercounty mutual transfers. They used to be part of our system, albeit in an ad hoc manner.
With respect to the challenges on the administrative burden and cost I again think the HAP crossover shows there are straightforward ways to do this. I acknowledge it would create a small amount of additional administrative burden, but you are not talking about creating some new mammoth system. I think the issue of technological challenges is a bit of red herring. Nobody is proposing the need for a national IT system. We can already deal with intercounty protocols of various kinds using the existing systems there, imperfect as they are. The fact that the domestic, sexual and gender-based violence transfer protocol has been introduced, albeit on a limited initial basis demonstrates that those problems can be overcome. I am not at all suggesting that a Bill like this would pass through the House and then, within days, those systems would be in place. I accept it would take some time and engagement on those but I do not think there is as much of a challenge as the Minister of State suggested.
He is correct that we have made provision in the Bill for an all-Ireland dimension. It is general. It is a "may". It is following engagement on a cross-jurisdictional basis. Having lived there and having been a tenant of the Housing Executive for nine years, I an aware the systems are different. If we think the intercounty local authority complexities are complex here, they are even more complex there. I do not for a moment think that would be a quick or straightforward challenge. For people who live across the Border regions, there is real value in looking at it, which is why we put it in the Bill.
On the protocol, which was published last week, the Minister of State is not the first person to say to me that when it is revised, there might be a way of looking at addressing the issue of HAP or RAS tenants. That is quite a big admission, literally a few days after the thing was introduced. Let me make the case in the few minutes I have for why that issue needs to be addressed much more urgently, separate to this legislation. I do it by illustrating the absurdity of the arrangement that is proposed. As we know, people living in the private rental sector in receipt of rent supplement remain on the local authority housing list. They are not defined as in receipt of social housing support as per the legislation or adequately housed. They are renting and they are in receipt of rent supplement.
If a woman in that situation is at risk of, or is experiencing and seeking to flee, serious domestic, sexual or gender-based violence, she will be able to access the protocol. That is a really good thing and I welcome it. However, if a woman living on the same street in a similar private rental property who has been on the council list for the same length of time happens to be in receipt of HAP because of the consequences of the Housing Act 2010, is not on the principal council waiting list and is in receipt of social housing support, she is deemed under law to be adequately housed and will be denied access to the protocol. That makes no sense. Let us park the issue of whether people on HAP or RAS are adequately housed; that is an argument for another day. It would not have been administratively or legally unduly complex to have included HAP and RAS tenants in the protocol. It would have required a bit of extra work and flexibility, but how can we stand here and say a woman in need of the protocol on rent supplement can access it but a woman in need of the protocol on HAP cannot? It makes no sense.
When I say this to some people - and I take it from the Minister of State's reaction when Deputy O'Reilly and I raised it - there is some surprise. People's initial reaction is it does not make any sense. Obviously, it throws up a broader question. Those folks are on transfer lists and other people are on transfer lists. How do we start to disentangle that? I do not for a moment suggest those things are not tricky, but let us deal with the numbers. 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. That brings us to over 56,000. They are predominantly families and people with children. In fact, there is a larger number of women with children there. So when I say potentially half the cohort of people who will need access to the protocol will be denied, that is just a statistical fact. I have said publicly, including to the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, last week, and will say it to the Minister, Deputy Browne, when I have the opportunity, that I do not think we can wait for a review of the protocol to fix that. Ministerial direction needs to be given to the officials, who in turn have to go back to the local authorities. There will be some local resistance to this. I have talked to the local authorities and I get it, but that needs to be urgently changed. That circular needs to be revised and reissued as a matter of urgency. If we do not do that, we will put a cohort of women at serious risk and in precarious positions.
I fully accept the Government's bona fides in introducing that protocol. Deputy O'Reilly welcomed it last week when it was published and I am welcoming it today. I know the Government is trying to do the right thing but it cannot do the right thing when half the cohort of people who need that crucial intervention are denied it for narrow, rigid, bureaucratic reasons.
I may regret saying this, but I will take the Minister of State at his word that he and his partners in government are genuinely interested in getting this proposal right and are willing to work with all of us in opposition to address it. I look forward to all the Opposition being invited up to the Custom House, having tea and biscuits with Nina and the team and teasing these issues out along with the local government sector. I think we have technical solutions to some of the issues the Minister of State raised. I know some of the arguments some in the local government sector are making are not as problematic as they may seem. If in six months - and definitely in 12 months - there is no movement, I will come back here and say, "Minister, I was wrong to take you at face value. I should have allowed my cynicism to shine through because you haven't taken the issue seriously." Let us fix it. It can be six months, 12 months or whatever length of time the Minister of State thinks it will take, but let us do it. Nobody in this debate has said it should not be done or that there are not good reasons to do it. I am willing to work with anybody in government, and with any officials in the Department or the local government sector, to get it right. Let us go and do it.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-09