Mr. Mike Allen:

It is an emergency response to the crisis we are seeing. I agree that in general throwing a tax relief at the problem is not good economic or social policy. What we have is a person whose income is insufficient to pay the market rent. Therefore, the State needs to provide a subsidy. Currently, it provides that subsidy through a cash payment - rent supplement - but it is not working for a number of reasons. We suggest another form of subsidy through tax relief. It needs to be seen in that context. It is different from subsidising a person on a low income in terms of his or her inability to purchase a good, in this case a roof over his or her head at market rents. It is not what we consider to be a long-term solution, but we will have two years or, if we are lucky, many more, given that there is simply not enough social housing which is subsidised in a more effective way available. It needs to be very closely linked with other programmes such as Slí and so on in order that we would not have someone going in and failing in that tenancy. There are tenancy sustainment systems which have to be linked to be effective. To be given one, one has to be on the homeless list. There has to be the involvement of the local authority, which would trigger these support systems.