FOUR STATE agencies are to be amalgamated following a review by Minister of State for Housing Michael Finneran.
The four housing related agencies, the National Building Agency, the Homeless Agency, the Affordable Homes Partnership and the Centre for Housing Research, employ more than 100 people.
Legislation will be required for amalgamation and Mr Finneran said yesterday the review will be completed in the next number of weeks. It is understood plans for the amalgamation are well advanced and the Centre for Housing Research is expected to move next week to the offices of the Affordable Homes Partnership.
The Minister was launching the housing agency Threshold’s annual report. Its chairwoman Aideen Hayden called for the Government to establish a national housing agency to work alongside the National Asset Management Agency (Nama).
Ms Hayden said the new agency could manage the housing stock and land-banks that should be used to meet housing needs.
She pointed to the 56,000 people on housing waiting lists and said the “current crisis presents an opportunity” to deal with housing problems. The “taxpayer is paying for this property anyway” and the State was paying €500 million in rent supplement for 91,000 tenants, so there could be a “social dividend” and a lot of the land within Nama’s remit “are in very good locations”.
Ms Hayden said the new agency could be an expanded version of the Affordable Homes Partnership, which co-ordinates provision of affordable homes, and it should have overall responsibility for directing housing policy.
Speaking afterwards however, the Minister said he was against creating new agencies. “In fact I am looking at a number of agencies and bodies with a view to amalgamating them, to prevent duplication of services”.
Mr Finneran reiterated new Government policy to provide housing through long-term leasing. This was “very much a complementary process to Nama”. Leasing “is not just another social housing option, it is the main one”.
This “new initiative will deliver at least 2,000 new homes in 2009 alone and at least 4,000 in 2010. I anticipate it actually has the potential to allow for a significant increase in social housing supply over the next few years”. This “is something that would simply not be possible if we were to hold fast to the tried and test conventional means of delivery”.
Dublin City Labour councillor Eric Byrne, head of the council’s housing strategic policy unit believes, however, that by next year “local authorities will be left with no social housing strategy other than leasing”.
Independent councillor Mannix Flynn said the housing sector needed a “fundamental overhaul” and he criticised Dublin City Council as the architect of its own housing problems. Housing was the “engine room” of society, he said. “It’s the way you control your people and look what the council has done.” He highlighted problems in the new York Street flats and in Charlemont Street “which is left derelict. Look at O’Devaney Gardens. They forget there are real people living there.”
