Mr. Mike Allen:

I will answer some of the questions and then I will ask Ms Ann-Marie O'Reilly to talk a bit about how it looks on the front line. On the point made by the Chairman, it is a really important way of looking at the issue. Some families are one parent families from the very beginning and others arrive at it as a result of some form of crisis such as a death or relationship breakdown. It is our understanding of homelessness that these sort of crises increase the risk of other things going wrong. In the current housing situation where housing is very hard to find, it is not surprising that families getting into these crises find themselves getting into housing problems as well and that pushes us back. What more can we do to prevent homelessness at that point? There is a clear risk for many households in which there would not have been a risk before who necessarily do not go to agencies to avoid homelessness. Focus Ireland is doing a lot of work on this. Many of the people who are currently facing homelessness would not go down to the coffee shop to look for advice because they associate it with a different type of homelessness and something that is nothing to do with them. They do not do anything until it is too late. These are really important issues that need to be explored.

The central sets of questions that were asked about rent certainty, the private rental sector and social housing are very much related to each other. From where we are sitting, they are the two solutions to the problem. In homeless organisations and organisations for people who are vulnerable in the housing market, there has always been a view that there should be more certainty about rents. That really ramped up about three or four years ago when we began to see individuals and families on rent supplement unable to pay their rent. The Department of Social Protection at the time took the view that increasing rent supplement would further push up rents. We do not think the evidence was there for that but the Department did and that was its policy. The obvious answer to the Department's concern was that we cannot just leave people out there to hang and become homeless. If that was the problem, it needed to introduce some form of rent control. We have been arguing that now for several years. It is very welcome that there is now a form of rent certainty. It is a step in the right direction but it is an unusual version of it.

To some extent, the truth will be in the telling. One can make certain observations about it, even from what we already know. It uses this idea of the pressurised areas, which is present in Scottish legislation. It has never actually been enacted in Scottish legislation and we do not know how it works. There is obviously a need to do those things quickly because, as the Deputy and Senator have said, rent is increased when people know what is coming down the track. That is the problem with that model. The other important thing to say is that 4% is a fairly substantial increase compared to any other time in our history. That should automatically be triggering the Department of Social Protection and the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government to do something about rent supplement and HAP thresholds and to say they must do that. If the Department of Social Protection keeps the same position either by saying it will only increase rent supplement every three years or through some undefined policy, it will be disastrous. That should now be part of the picture.

The point of the private rental sector strategy is that all these different bits of the jigsaw need to be done together. What came out of the process is that the Minister put the various bits of the jigsaw in various different committees again. I find it very hard to see how the review group on taxation of the private rented sector can link with issues about security in the private rented sector because the whole point is the trade-off between them. The whole point is it is meant to be a strategy in which there is a trade-off between that bit and the next bit.

Putting them all into different committees, which is what the Minister essentially did, is problematic. Something was lost in that which should not have been lost. The most important document on the private rented sector in the past ten years or perhaps longer was the NESC document. It has been forgotten and has not been mentioned in the strategy. If it is lost, we are lost because it is not possible to get a solution to housing without an effective private rented sector in a modern economy.

We also cannot get a solution to housing and homelessness without an effective social housing sector. I accept what Senator Humphreys said about what many councillors anecdotally said about the introduction of the policy with 50% of social housing allocations in Dublin going to homeless and other vulnerable groups and 25% in other cities. There was a lot of talk of that. The data do not support that. The number of families becoming homeless over the period of time that policy existed increased. When that policy was in place, there was no point at which it suddenly began to increase faster. When the policy was removed, it did not start to decline.

I do not dismiss anecdotal information, which needs to be borne in mind as part of the picture. However, if we end up believing that policy created homelessness, it is necessary to believe that Dublin families are uniquely inclined to respond to such incentives. There was no increase in family homelessness in Limerick even though it got a substantial increase. There was no increase in family homelessness in Cork until it was removed. A lot of work is being done on this, in particular an important study in New York, which found it had a slight pull factor of bringing families into homelessness when they had this allocation, but it was a much more effective push-out factor and it was worth taking the small pull in without the out.

The Housing Agency did draw up a report. Taking on board what the Chairman said about being careful in what I say about outside organisations - I have the utmost respect for the Housing Agency and its research function - this report is not up to standard. The only thing it mentions about this issue, about which the Senator is rightly concerned, is to state there is emerging evidence. The evidence never emerged and the emerging evidence was hearsay. The concern that the Senator and councillors had about that are legitimate and should have been addressed in a serious piece of work before the policy was changed, rather than being based on things that had been heard.

We have stated that 0.1% of the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government budget should be spent on research - of course, it is not doing it. We take the opportunity today to extend that suggestion to the Department of Social Protection.

I would like to come back and sum up, but first I ask Ms O'Reilly to speak about these experiences on the front line.