One of the questions that have arisen over the allocation of social housing is the extent to which former residents of IPAS centres have been prioritised by Approved Housing Bodies and local authorities when they determine the relative merits of individual applications.
There have also been queries in relation to the allocation of houses to Ukrainians who are under Temporary Protection and who apparently have a dedicated Accommodation Team which is now under the auspices of the Department of Justice.
A recent letter to the Connacht Telegraph noted that while a single Ukrainian woman had been allocated a three-bedroom house in Castlebar that two other families – one from the Traveller community, who have children with special needs – were left remain in hotel accommodation or given a remote rural house that has no Eircode.
There have also been cases where families with no connection to the local area, and who it would appear have recently been in asylum accommodation and then briefly in homeless accommodation, have been allocated houses in Finglas and elsewhere while local people remain on the waiting list.
It is evident, as reported by myself previously, that the Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) have assumed a growing role in the allocation of social housing. By the admission of one, De Paul, they would appear to strongly prioritise former residents of IPAS centres in all of which they have a presence.
However, when I contacted the 12 main AHBs and the Irish Council for Social Housing with detailed questions in relation to their role in accommodating former IPAS residents I was met with a blanket silence.
I then submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority (AHBRA.) This is the body that has statutory responsibility for overseeing the standards applied by the AHBs regarding Governance, Financial Management, Property and Asset Management and Tenancy Management.
Naively on my part I thought to myself that these are the very people who will be able to answer the following:
Not so it seems, for while AHBRA states that part of its remit is to ensure that the AHBs are complying with “requirements for homes to be allocated fairly, transparently, and in accordance with funding obligations,” they are slow in making public what they find.
While the authority claims to “examine the arrangements AHBs have in place to meet these requirements,” they told me that “this oversight does not involve routinely collecting individual tenants’ accommodation histories or tracking their movements between accommodation settings. AHBRA does not hold the specific information sought in your request, at the level of detail requested.”
Perhaps then this was a matter for higher levels of governance. Carol Nolan, independent TD for Offaly, had submitted a number of PQs to the Minister for Justice on the same theme. The questions requested information on “the number of persons or households that have been allocated housing directly from IPAS accommodation.”
This and two other questions related to the role of the AHBs in any such allocation, and the transfer of IPAS residents into homeless accommodation into local authority social housing were disallowed on the grounds that the Minister has no responsibility for those matters. And that specifically the question regarding the transfer from IPAS to homeless accommodation to social housing was one for the local authority in question.
However, as we know, local authorities are notoriously coy about releasing such information. Further it is clear that the Department of Justice has taken responsibility for the housing of former IPAS residents in private residential housing.
That was made clear where I discovered that the Department owned a house at Forgehill in Stamullen which they were intending to use for this purpose until it was revealed by me and protests led to the Department backing down.
In her response to the disallowing of her PQs, Carol Nolan claimed that “the minister refusing to answer parliamentary questions about the role and practises of bodies that receive billions of Euros from the Irish taxpayer, this is simply infuriating. It is an attempt to conceal and hide the data that they know will likely outrage the Irish people.
“Especially given the enormous tab, to the tune of hundreds of millions of euros annually, that the Irish taxpayer is picking up to fund these AHBs. The data should be readily available and accessible. We should not have to pursue a labyrinthine process to establish who is being allocated houses that are being funded by the Irish taxpayer.”
It is apparent that residential housing, both private rental and social housing, is being used by the State to accommodate former residents of IPAS centres. The levelling-off in numbers in direct provision alone proves that.
However, the extent to which it is taking place and how that relates to the allocation of housing by the local authorities remains a matter of speculation. Speculation that is not assisted by the blanket omerta that appears to surround this issue from all of the relevant authorities.