17 May 2006

Environment

Assessments for Social and Affordable Housing

Ciarán Cuffe asked the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government the change in methodologies that have been used in the compiling of the assessment of need of housing between the 2002 and the 2005 assessments; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government (Mr. N. Ahern): In accordance with Section 9 of the Housing Act 1988 an assessment of need for local authority housing is undertaken every three years, the last of which was undertaken in 2005. The 2005 assessment was the most rigorous to date and was the first time that an IT database was used to gather, collate and examine the results of the assessment. The procedure involved each local authority transmitting their assessment results in an IT format to the Local Government Computer Services Board for validation and collation.

In order to ensure a consistency of information gathered across local authorities my Department in co-operation with a number of local authorities and the LGCSB combined to develop a new generic housing application form which captured all the information necessary for a local authority to assess a housing application.