Madam, - Further to Kitty Holland's report "Housing sell-off to have 'little impact' on poverty" (The Irish Times, November 17th), we would like to raise a number of points about Dublin City Council's transfer of housing stock.
The council has been transferring management of its housing stock for a number of years. At the recent conference, "Directions for Housing in Dublin City", assistant city manager Brendan Kenny confirmed that, despite the huge State investment in building, renovating and letting social housing, there is no monitoring of the performance of housing associations or public-private partnerships once management has been transferred to them.
This means, in effect, that such bodies are not accountable to Dublin City Council or to elected city councillors.
Given the growing concern among social housing residents that housing providers are cutting services without meaningful consultation with residents and social partners, we believe there is a need for independent regulation of social housing. The performance of social housing providers and public-private partnerships should be evaluated in terms of quality assurance and customer/tenant care. Representatives of residents associations and social partners should be included in this process. Surely Dublin City Council has learnt lessons from the past management of housing estates, which was not only ineffective and wasteful but also marginalised the voice of the local residents.
It is time for the council to invite local communities to be directly involved in decision-making and monitoring of housing provision and management.- Yours, etc.,
JOHN BATES, Killarney Court Residents Association, Killarney Street, Dublin 1.