Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Clear as mud. There is a lot of detail in that response that needs to be examined.

I have a concern, although it may be covered in the detail of the Bill. People who are homeless, particularly those on the streets, often have difficulty in navigating the elaborate bureaucracy and processes that must be gone through in order to get into the system. I am worried about the axe that falls if people do not take certain actions within a specified period to ensure they are in receipt of the HAP in the crossover period from the RAS to the HAP. If the onus is on the homeless person to ensure he or she is transferred, this is a cruel instrument of which many may fall foul because of literacy problems or their general plight. I need to examine the detail, but I urge the Minister of State to think about this. We may find that many will be told they are off the system because they did not comply with requirements and will not receive any rent allowance because they did not move correctly into the HAP scheme.

Another issue I would like to mention may not be covered in the detail of the Bill. People on the street often have great difficulty in providing an address. I am aware of a number of cases in which people who have offered the address of a sister or a brother have problems because this is not acceptable. For example, a guy in Dún Laoghaire who is from the town has a bad drug problem but is trying to kick drugs. There is no place for him in Bentley House, the homeless accommodation centre in Dún Laoghaire. As a result, he is sent into town to find accommodation, but he will not go because there are people with a chronic drug problem in the accommodation and he thinks he will have no chance of getting off drugs if he goes there. If he was provided with accommodation in Dún Laoghaire, he believes he would be okay. Faced with the option of going to Cedar House, he says he would rather sleep on the street, but the Department of Social Protection will not accept this. It states that if he does not stay in Cedar House, it will not accept his claim. These issues need to be examined in order that we do not have an unfair and rigid system under which people will be axed and told that if they do not carry out a certain action, they will be off the system. While I do not know how we can legislate for this issue, I wanted to flag it. I will study the Bill in more detail.