Mr. Pat Doyle:

Thank you, Chairman. I am the CEO of the Peter McVerry Trust. I thank the committee for inviting us. I would like to echo what Mr. Balbirnie was saying. This is very complex and there are multiple issues at stake. We have had a very good working relationship with the Department of Social Protection. Deputy Ellis raised the issue of rent certainty, which we have been pushing for. In other countries, if people have rent certainty for three to five years' tenure, it gives them time to plan and perhaps to move beyond private renting. We need that and appreciate that efforts have been made to address it.

The rent cap has to be part of it. Deputy Ryan is right that supply is the overwhelming issue. The trust has been very fortunate in respects of announcements by the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government in the last two years, and there are a number of major building projects on the way. One is to start in July; the funding for it was granted last year, the building will take place this year and we will not get a tenancy before the new year. Although the building work will be happening over the next 18 months to two or three years, in the meantime we have a huge number of people in emergency beds who need to get out. We also have a great number of people who need to be given emergency beds. We had the crisis at Christmas, when 260 or 270 beds came in, and they are full now. If we do not get people out of the emergency beds, we will not be able to bring people in. Rent caps play a role in that.

We spent a good proportion of our presentation talking about the rent supplement initiative, which worked very well in conjunction with the Department of Social Protection. We named 400 people in emergency beds who were ready for private accommodation and we had people out trying to get properties with appropriate levels of rent. While the housing assistance payment, HAP, allows homeless households a 20% increase in the maximum rent limits, the rents we were agreeing with the Department of Social Protection were above that. Although we are not discussing HAP, let us not take any scheme or idea off the table. Let us keep talking about the rent caps, because they are not meeting market rates at the moment, and let us bring back the rent supplement initiative which enabled us to go above the 20% increase allowed through HAP.