Ms Helen Faughnan:

I am on the housing assistance payment implementation board, so I can take that issue back and feed it into the discussion on top-up issues.

Deputy Quinlivan also asked about letters. Rent supplement was originally designed as a short-term income support. The idea was that it would be provided to someone living in rented accommodation who lost his or her job and needed support for a couple of weeks or a month until he or she got back into employment. That went out the window during the recession. The big difficulty with the rent supplement scheme is that there are barriers to employment in it. Under the housing assistance payment scheme, a person's payments are adjusted when he or she takes up part-time or full-time work and decisions on differential rent are made on the basis of need. We have had success in supporting people back into work under that scheme. For example, 120 households moved from unemployment into part-time work, more than 90 households moved from unemployment to full-time work and ten households moved from part-time to full-time employment without any stopping or starting of their accommodation issues, which are separate. We are focusing on people who have been receiving rent supplement for more than 18 months. We are engaging with our customers. We are not go to force them out if their landlords do not want to go into the housing assistance payment process. We want to engage with people by supporting and encouraging them. It is in their best interests to be supported into employment.

I was also asked about the whole area of top-ups. Part of the difficulty is that people will not come into us to declare their top-ups. My key message today is to reassure people not to be scared of coming in and talking to our staff. If people are struggling to meet top-up payments, we can increase their rent supplement payments to cover that. We are not in a position to do so if the discrepancy is wildly exorbitant but that is not the case with most of these people. We can assist with reasonable payments. People need to come in and talk to us. They will not be penalised in any way. There is evidence to show that those who have come in have been accommodated. As I have said, when we consider the extension of the protocol, we will work with the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and Threshold in looking at the critical areas, such as counties where there have been many increased payments or where the housing assistance payment scheme is not in play.

I thank Deputies O'Rourke and O'Dowd for their compliments. The staff of the Department have a challenging job in trying to meet the needs of customers who are often distressed when they come in. We try our best to put people at ease and to meet their needs as speedily as possible. We keep the Department's resources under continuous review to see where we need to act in the best interests of our customers. We have put a great deal of resources into our case officer work. We are engaging with unemployed people to try to support them to get into work, in the first instance, or otherwise into education or training. We hope that if we can help people to get back into work, they will be able to be self-sufficient in meeting their accommodation costs. We have cross-trained many staff. The new cadre of staff who are trained as community welfare officers can be of assistance when there is a particular need. This happened during the flooding crisis, which affected many counties over Christmas and into January. Staff were available on the ground to meet people, etc., and cater for their requirements. We have streamlined the application process to quite a degree. The application form used to have many elements but we have streamlined it to a good degree.

We try to engage with our clients to support them in processing their applications. It is complicated in so far as this involves a two-stage process and the details of the landlord are required in addition to those of the tenant. The Dublin Regional Homeless Executive, with the non-governmental organisations, particularly Focus Ireland and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, among others, operates a front-line advocacy service. It is engaging with this issue by putting in place rent deposits to secure accommodation where the position regarding the latter is tight.

To clarify the issue raised regarding Celbridge and County Kildare, a significant number of uplifts - 384 - have been paid in County Kildare for people in receipt of rent supplement. I am a little surprised that somebody would not offer an exceptional needs payment to make a rent deposit. Perhaps the Deputy will give me information on specific cases after the meeting and I will follow up on the matter. We gave clear instructions to our staff on two occasions last year to be as flexible as possible during the homelessness crisis. In general, community welfare staff do not need our blessing in that respect as they view this as a duty of care to their customers. However, with almost 7,000 staff in the Department, there may be instances where staff do not react in the correct manner. If there are particular cases, I ask members to bring them to our attention and we will address them.

I confirm that exceptional needs payments are being made. Last year, for example, the Department made more than 2,500 exceptional needs payments for rent deposits and rent in advance, at a cost of €1.48 million. The average payment was approximately €590 and a similar figure was paid out the previous year, as noted in the opening statement. If members believe these payments are not being made in particular areas, especially where housing supply is acute, I ask them to inform the Department.