David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I understand that but I am saying we will come back to HAP and all those areas in January.

During a meeting with officials from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection the housing representatives attended. It was extraordinary that we were not able to get from the departmental officials information such as how many people were on HAP transfers. They said they did not have it; the local authorities have it. We are trying to get the local authority managers to come before the committee and they are refusing to do it. That all needs to be settled before we come back in January and deal with this in a more substantive way.

In fairness it was an assistant principal from the Department who might not have been in a position to answer all the questions we had anyway. Even at that, I found some of the responses from the Department extraordinary. This plays into it. Before we come back to this in January we need to look at the information we sought but did not get because they did not have it. We need to get some response from local authorities. It is not good enough for the Department to claim that the local authorities hold the information but it has not asked them for it. We have asked representatives of the local authorities but they will not appear before the committee. We are missing a big piece of the jigsaw.