Mr. Bob Jordan:

Threshold is a national housing charity that works with approximately 20,000 of the poorest households in Ireland. The private rented sector has grown quite considerably in the past five years. It has almost doubled in size, to the point where approximately one third of people in Dublin are living in private rented housing. When one thinks about the discourse we have on the housing crisis, we talk about keeping people in their family homes, but we need to talk about protecting people in the private rented sector who are renting their family home. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that, in the next five years in one of our cities, there will be more people renting than who own homes. The rental rate in Galway city is already 40%. This Government policy does not reflect the scale of people living in the private rented sector.

Unfortunately, the private rented sector has absorbed people who traditionally would have got local authority housing, in addition to people who have been locked out of home ownership over the past five years. That has been taken for granted but cannot be taken for granted any more.

Let me outline the current problems that our clients are facing. People come to us every day who simply cannot find anywhere to live. Rent supplement has been cut so much that they do not have a housing option in their area anymore. They will be among the next homeless. People approached us who have been displaced from their housing. Unfortunately, the Department of Social Protection has been part of this process because it cut their payment and told them to find cheaper housing in a market where costs are rising. There are people living in substandard accommodation. The scale of mortgage arrears in the buy-to-let sector is well documented. Some landlords have not visited their property in five years, never mind carrying out repairs. There are people in substandard accommodation paid for by the State. There is also the issue of receiverships and repossession. Banks are stepping into the private rented market and, unfortunately, not adhering to the rules that exist. It has got very messy.

What we want to see in budget 2014 is an acknowledgement that we need to protect access to affordable accommodation for people on low incomes. We also need to protect people in their homes. There have been some attempts to do this over the years. The rental accommodation scheme has been introduced. It looks good on paper. Certainly, tenants are not paying top-ups like they are paying under the rent supplement scheme; it is better-quality accommodation. The problem, to some extent, is that landlords are wriggling out of those agreements now and local authorities are not really putting up much of a fight.

A new payment is supposed to be introduced for people on long-term rent supplement, namely, the housing assistance payment. We warmly welcome it because it removes one of the biggest negatives associated with rent supplement, such that people will be able to take up work and get some help with their housing costs. That needs to come forward quite quickly but we need to take account of the fact that when the payment is introduced there may need to be some incentives for landlords to ensure that they actually take up the scheme because we are worried about that.