Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What is the Department's expenditure on rent supplement and on the rental accommodation scheme? The last figure we heard for the number of people in receipt of rent supplement was 78,000 but that figure has decreased to 71,000. That indicates that 7,000 of that initial number are no longer in receipt of that supplement. Some of those people are now in receipt of a housing assistance payment but a number of them have disappeared in terms of the number in receipt of the supplement, which indicates that a huge number of those people are homeless. Do the witnesses accept that view?