Dr. Una Burns:

In terms of increasing the housing assistance payment, HAP, the pilot scheme provides for limits of up to 50% more than the rent supplement. Novas believes having this flexibility would work. Based on a search of the daft.iewebsite, a one-bedroom apartment in Limerick costs between €550 and €850. If the HAP payment is capped at €375 for a single person, a top-up payment of 15% will not work. For this reason, we recommend increasing the limit by 50%.

On the social housing required for the Housing First policy, we would like to secure units from local authority housing stock. However, we are also interested in purchasing homes. We need a guarantee that if we were to buy two-bedroom units, we would be able to use them to accommodate single persons. We would then engage in the process of acquiring properties immediately.