Ms Caroline Fahy:

The housing issue has become extremely prominent now as people lose their homes, both those with mortgages and those in the private rental sector. It is often forgotten that there is an increasing number of repossessions of local authority housing. Without tackling the housing issue it will be extremely difficult to tackle problems such as unemployment and so on. How can someone get a job if he or she does not have appropriate accommodation? For those who do manage to hang onto their tenancy the problem is the quality of the housing. Another problem we see is landlords who are not keen on taking tenants on rent supplement when there are many other people with a deposit and first and second month’s rent in their hand. Incentives could be put in place for landlords in the private rental sector to take those more vulnerable tenants and bring the accommodation up to minimum standards of energy efficiency.