Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak to this very important motion. I thank Sinn Féin for tabling it.

I compliment staff in Department of Social Protection offices throughout the country who, since Covid-19 came upon us, have done Trojan work to deal with everything that has been thrown at them. I think it was the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, who said last year that when people were struggling they should contact their community welfare officers. That was in very poor taste for the simple reason that everybody who was listening to the Government decided that if they had an issue they could go to their community welfare officer. That has now created a tsunami of inquiries. We have a situation whereby community welfare officers cannot take phone calls or deal with the issues that are being given to them in a timely fashion. No additional resources are being given to these offices. That is a disgrace. At present, people waiting for supplementary welfare might wait up to 12 weeks. That is not the fault of those trying to deal with this. It is the fault of the people who promoted the idea that social welfare officers would solve every problem that every home has, which was unfair on those officers. I wanted to get that out there.

We have to focus on what the issues are and how we will resolve them. People who are on fixed incomes are still struggling and any talk of taking away the supports that were put in place in the budget is ill-timed. It would be ill-judged to change those supports at this stage. People who are working and do not qualify for social housing, whose household income might be €36,000 or €37,000 and cannot qualify to get onto social housing lists but then qualify for the housing assistance payment, HAP, should be given meaningful supports. We have middle-income people and families who are working to try to stay in existence. They are trying to hold families together and pay all the bills that are coming in. That is an issue that needs to be addressed.

My second point is on people renting accommodation. I am a landlord but I see people coming into my constituency office who are saying their rent increased from €900 to €1,600. That is a devastating blow to get. If people are budgeting and struggling at €900, how will they pay for the rest of it? If they cannot qualify for HAP, where do they go to get some help? For people who are renting and getting no other support, a rent credit per month should be put in place to help them get over this financial burden that is on them at present.

The VAT rate for the hospitality sector should not be increased. If we are to build up our tourism and hospitality services, we need to make sure we stick with those sectors to make sure they can grow themselves back to full throttle again.

People with disabilities have always suffered. This was well flagged in the Indecon report, which stated that anybody with a disability has an additional living cost of approximately €12,000 per year. We do not take this into account when we talk about the increased cost of living and increasing inflation, but it is important that people who have a disability are given the necessary additional supports they now need in order to try to maintain independence of some sort.

Last week, we talked about mortgage interest relief. People who are brave enough to take out a mortgage and take on the purchase of a house without looking for State aid now need to be given that little bit of a leg-up in making sure they get some tax relief on their mortgages, which needs to be put in place immediately. That could be a temporary measure for the next two to three years until things settle down again.

The Department has done a huge amount of work and brought in a significant number of schemes. We need to do a lot more, however, and keep much more in place because this problem has not gone away. As long as we have a housing issue that is completely out of control, we will have all the add-on problems we see day to day.

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