Ms Niamh Randall:

Senator Hayden asked a particular question about rent supplement, so I would like to follow up on that. We made a point in that in our submission and we also made it clear that access to the private rented sector is becoming increasingly challenging, with rents increasing and the properties available decreasing, especially in urban areas. The answer to that is a supply issue. That feeds back into a query by Deputy Doherty earlier on, when he asked what was the key thing. It is supply because if we can get the supply piece going, we can move people out of emergency accommodation. We have not specifically looked at rent controls in our organisations, nor within MakeRoom, but it is certainly something that we will look at and we probably should look at. Perhaps we can get back to the committee on that in respect of the rent controls issue.

The 3% cut in social welfare will push people over the edge and we will definitely see some of those people in homeless services in future.