Mr. Mike Allen:

The reservations that families have about HAP - I am sure this is true for individuals too - are based on objective facts, which are a result of specific public policies. Therefore, the way to deal with their reservations is not to put more pressure on them to take offers they do not want to take but to change the public policies which make that form of housing insecure.

The big answer is more social housing, but there are smaller answers immediately available. The first, as Deputy Ó Broin has mentioned, is the policy used in south County Dublin to integrate the HAP transfer list with the housing list. This would make a huge difference to the reality of people accepting HAP offers. If one has been on the housing list for ten years and takes a HAP offer and knows that is it and that one is now back to the bottom of the housing list, it is a huge disincentive. There is absolutely no reason why what was introduced in south Dublin could not be introduced everywhere else and made policy rather than just an individual positive measure.

The second answer concerns security. People, if they move into private rented accommodation, get a Part 4 tenancy for six years but they know that if the landlord is going to sell up or renovate the property, he can terminate the tenancy at any point. Again, as Focus Ireland has argued, these loopholes which allow landlords to evict tenants at will when they want to sell up, or say they want to sell up, should be removed for all private sector combination buy-to-lets. This would make HAP more attractive.

Someone on a HAP tenancy pays the differential rent but when the rent goes up, as it is allowed to by 4%, very often the amount that the local authority will pay under HAP does not go up. There is very little discussion of this. There seems to be no policy to ensure that that follows. The State says the landlord can put up the rent by 4% but takes no responsibility to pay that, so people in HAP premises are finding themselves paying the differential rent and making up a gap between the rent and the actual amount being paid. Under rent supplement this was illegal. It was widespread but at least it was acknowledged publicly as wrong and illegal. Under HAP, it appears to be treated as if it is perfectly okay. This drives people into much deeper poverty and below their minimum threshold of income and makes HAP less attractive because they know they will be squeezed. That is the issue with HAP.

Regarding what has been said about the local authorities, the stories the families tell need to be listened to. As Mr. Harvey correctly says, local authority staff have a different perspective. Most local authority staff are courteous and hard-working, and we recognise the huge pressure they are under, but the absence of guidelines and training for front-line staff in dealing with these hugely pressured situations is sadly missing.

Finally, if the public discourse about homelessness presents people who are homeless as gamers and scammers who are essentially trying to cheat the system, the front-line staff inevitably respond by trying to catch them out. If the relationship between a public servant and a citizen needing support is one in which the public servant feels he or she is being cheated, if that is the public discourse, it is very hard to make that a supportive and human relationship. This is why we so strongly reacted to the comments of the chair of the Housing Agency and why we do not think he is suitable to hold that post.