Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On that point, in everything we say we have to have two levels of operation. These are the immediate and the longer term and they have to work in parallel. If somebody is going to bed in a freezing caravan tonight there is no point in having a plan that will take three, four or five years. Some things have to be short term and others long term but it is not a case of one or the other as it has to be both.

On the energy credit, I suggest, through the Cathaoirleach, that we also write to the Minister for Social Protection and suggest that in the case under the present law the energy credit cannot be paid to individuals in circumstances that cannot be foreseen, then an equivalent amount would be made available through the supplementary welfare scheme immediately.

Because again, it is a case of live horse and you will get grass and that is no good. We need an immediate solution. The exceptional needs payment is fairly flexible. It could be that the Minister for social welfare were to write to the local office to say that it is a trailer and the household cannot get the electricity credit and that they would be given an equivalent amount of money under SWA. If Mr. Dillon could do that and copy the members of the committee on the email, and if we could agree that later, it might be a short-term resolution to what I understand is a serious problem.

I have done a lot of work on the trailer scheme and I do not understand the Department, to be quite honest. It is petty-minded and mean and if it was happening to any other community, it would not be accepted. We took a case to the Ombudsman on behalf of one individual and, miraculously, they have been granted the loan this year but there are a lot of problems with the scheme. I agree with most of what has been said. If the Traveller community want trailers, that should be accepted as a name change.

The big thing I cannot get my head around is this. I do not care how many trailers are needed; if they are needed they are needed. It should be done by objective need and not an arbitrary number. There should be no rationing; end of story. This should be sorted this year - now. That can be done. The money is there. There is a lot of talk about money being there but in this case, the need is acute and it is small money in terms of the overall budget. That is something I have been adamant about. The second is the standard BS 3636. The money should be enough, and you are 100% correct, to provide that. Providing €40,000 for second-hand caravans is totally unacceptable. I understand the installation money is on top of that but it is just not good enough. It should be an objective standard. In other words, there is an objective need and an objective standard. The committee should agree on that.

The next issue I come across is fixed rent, fixed payment. Whatever has to be paid back – and I agree we should be flexible whether it is a rental or a purchase and it should be the applicants choice - it should be a fixed repayment. I think the lowest is €20 and I believe that should be the highest one as well and that it should be a fixed repayment irrespective of anything and there should be no relationship to the provision cost. It is a question of affordability. The same thing goes for a local authority house.

There is one other problem I am coming up against. It is core to MABS, if I may say so. Many housing tenants come in to me who are in arrears with their council rent, caravan rent or whatever they are renting. This applies to standard housing as well. The first thing I do is look for the rent record to see how it happened. If they have not been paying any rent or have not been paying the rent they were told at the time, then that is one issue. It is an issue for MABS, perhaps. On the other hand, I am often finding that they have been paying the rent agreed but they have not been notifying the local authorities every year that the social welfare has increased, even though everyone knows it has increased. Then after two or three years the council reassesses the rent and tells the tenants that they should have been on a higher rent because they were getting more social welfare. My view is that the obligation should be on the local authorities, if they are going to change the rent, based on welfare, but that is a wider debate. If that is going to happen, they should do it there and then. It is much easier because they know everyone who is on a welfare income will be getting increases, so they should ask for a rent review or automatically adjust the rent and not suddenly apply arrears.

Are people who are on welfare meant to get the lump sum to make up the difference? Psychologically, we all find it easier to pay as we go rather than to come up with lump sums. It becomes a problem with the caravan scheme, and a very acute problem, because suddenly they are told they have to put the rent up. It is not good enough for it to be an arrangement.

There are two things here. The Department of Social Protection, when it has to do a means test on a self-employed person, it does not necessarily adjust it backwards. It takes it from that day forward. Second, if there is an arrangement there and it is being adhered to, that should not exclude someone from the caravan loan or rent scheme. Will Cena give me details on what has happened in Galway?