Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I was very impressed by what the witnesses said. The Government policy is to have, I think, 75,000 families or individuals helped through housing assistance payments and so on by 2020. That is a huge challenge and, from what the witnesses have said, it is not being met in any respect. It is probably more an issue for the Government than for this committee. One answer might be to incentivise landlords through tax. In other words, some part of their mortgage debt or whatever could be written off provided they gave a tenancy for five years to the local authority. The tax advantage could be tied into the length of the lease or the term of the occupation. We have an awful lot of work to do on that. It is the most significant aspect of housing policy as I look at it today.

I have been in public life and dealing with housing for a long time. It has never been as bad in terms of numbers. The biggest difficulty I see at the moment is how those looking for housing are treated by the system. The local authorities are overrun. In my county they are top class but they do not have the space or time to give to individuals. Section 10 of the witnesses' presentation proposes greater supports. Would it make sense for people outside local authorities to act as advocates for applicants? All of the issues an applicant might need to present to the local authority could, if the applicant chose to do so, go through the advocate. There would be a professional, full-time, staffed office separate from the local authority. It would deal not with the physical housing need, but with all of the other issues, whether they be medical, social or family-related.

One of the categories that has cost me the most thought is that of men who are separated, in their 40s or 50s, who may have significant alcohol or personality problems. They are thrown on the scrap heap of life. While many of them will find a bed when they are not drinking, when they are drinking they are on the street. We need to look at that. Part of the problem is that they are on the housing list longer than anybody else. Because they may have no children or just one child, they are down the list of priority and are told "Sorry, we do not have a two bedroom house". There is a whole load of issues there. Perhaps when they go back, in their wisdom, the witnesses could help us formulate a new way of treating people. What is fundamental is the humanity, the human being, in all of our works, whatever they are. The goodness of those men - everything that they are - is lost at the moment, because nobody has time to listen or the skills to articulate the problem.

There is nowhere they can go to sort out all their other issues, which are huge, and housing is only part of that.