Rented homes allocation not spent last year

Only €700,000 of a €19 million allocation for a local authority housing rental scheme was spent last year.

At the Dáil Select Committee on Environment and Local Government yesterday, Minister of State Noel Ahern said funds for the rental accommodation scheme were not being taken up, partly because of local authorities' unwillingness to take on inferior private accommodation.

The scheme was designed to make private rental accommodation available to households that would otherwise be dependent on rent allowance.

Under the scheme, landlords would sign up to provide a property for four years to the local authority at a fixed rent.

When the scheme was launched in 2000, it was believed it would have significant benefits for tenants and landlords. However, landlords have proved reluctant to commit to a long-term deal, and local authorities are unhappy with the quality of much of the accommodation offered.

Fergus O'Dowd (FG) called on the department to increase the amount of rent they are willing to pay under the scheme.

Eamon Gilmore (Labour) asked what it said about the quality of new apartments being built if they were not meeting local authority standards.

Mr Ahern said he accepted that even compared to when the scheme was launched, rents in the private sector had increased considerably, but a lot of the problem with accommodation being offered was that it was in the single-person category and "would not be great".

Ciarán Cuffe (Greens) complained that "a liberal dose of snake oil" had been applied to figures relating to numbers on housing authority waiting lists.

Mr Ahern had said there was a reduction of almost 10 per cent in the number of households seeking local authority housing since 2002. However, it emerged yesterday that, for the first time in the 2005 assessment, applicants' PPS numbers had been crosschecked between authorities so that multiple applications were only counted as one.

"PPS numbers have helped but it was not a change in overall methodology," Mr Ahern said. "There was always an attempt to shake out double applications manually."

Mr O'Dowd said that the Department of the Environment was "a bit like the Kremlin, it has a fine façade but inside there is just arrogance".