Ms Caroline Fahy:

Recently, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul made a submission on the development of a five-year social housing strategy. We sought a longer-term plan because we want to tackle the housing waiting list and ensure that people on very low incomes, plus the bottom 30% of earners, can access housing because their income may not be sufficient to purchase a home. These people need to have to have something a bit better than the private rental sector and everything that goes with it.

We are broadly in favour of the introduction of HAP because it is better than rent supplement in terms of allowing people to take up employment while not losing everything straight away in terms of housing support. As with rent supplement, we are concerned that landlords will not necessarily take on HAP tenants. Plus, HAP does not do anything to increase the State's housing stock, which is the big issue. The problem is that the building of social housing has stopped and we must now deal with the results. The private sector has a role to play in the provision of housing to low-income households, but we cannot rely on it because the sector has completely failed. These are our concerns.