John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On a point of clarification, Ms O'Donoghue spoke earlier about flexibility in relation to the housing needs throughout the country. I have to say that I do not see that flexibility in operation. In fact, it is quite the opposite. I have seen, through the work that comes through my constituency office, tenants who have been in rented accommodation getting into an argument over the level of rent now being asked for. When agreement is not reached with the social welfare office on the payment of rent allowance, in terms of the level of the rent allowance, I have seen cases in which the families concerned have ended up in hotels. The cost of the hotel is far greater than the cost the office would have had to pay if they had been left in the accommodation they were in. It was not a case of "I want to live here," or "This is the type of house I want." They were in the house.

Most of the members around this table will tell Ms O'Donoghue that in most locations it is not possible to get rental accommodation. A person is lucky to get into the rental accommodation scheme or the rent allowance scheme if the landlord will take him or her. Why is the Department so inflexible in those cases? We have, for example, ten families living in a hotel in Kilkenny, who could perhaps have continued to be provided with accommodation by the existing landlord in the accommodation they had. That is what is happening. My experience has been that this is the case. It is an awful waste of taxpayers' money that more effort is not made to understand the case of the individual family concerned and to attempt to keep them in their accommodation by way of agreement, rather than having them forced out so that they end up in a hotel at far greater cost. It is extraordinary. Whatever Ms O'Donoghue's analysis is telling her, I have to say that, within that analysis somewhere, these facts have to emerge, because they are facts. I can give Ms O'Donoghue names and cases from my city of Kilkenny. It is not working. The flexibility is simply not there, to be honest. When I heard Deputy Deasy talk earlier on, and Deputy Nolan continued that conversation with Ms O'Donoghue, I had to check against my experience, and my experience has been to the contrary.