Dr. Barra Roantree:

To briefly respond to Deputy Casey's point regarding if we were to look at moving away from income limits on social housing qualifications and consider that in terms of the HAP scheme and what that would do. That would move us much closer towards, say, the model of housing benefits in the UK where there is not an initial income limit to qualify for it and it goes much further up the income distribution element in that people can still be claiming something, but that has consequences. Many more households would be eligible, it would cost more and obviously we would want to consider how going from covering approximately one quarter of the private rental market in 2016 to beyond that would affect rents in general. That might be the type of issue that may need to be looked at in the short term at least if they are these issues of housing affordability. However, if we do that, we would have to make sure we would not forget to address the caps on rent limits.

As I mentioned in my opening statement, the rent limits have not been adjusted since March 2017 and since then rents have grown nationally by about 13%. That is one of the reasons, to come back to Deputy Ellis’s earlier point, fewer households are able to find houses available under the HAP scheme. Even with the flexibility that is built in, 20% of a fixed number is still a fix in that respect. That needs to be reviewed more regularly annually in the way social welfare payments are reviewed. It also comes back to the need to address differential rent schemes. At least in terms of the HAP scheme, if we have more households on that scheme and, currently, even if a household moves on to it and its income increases to €60,000 or €70,000, it would not end up paying the market rent; that would apply to the vast majority of local authority households. That means the Government might not be directing the subsidy in the way it intended to do. By reviewing again these differential rent schemes, at least for the HAP scheme, it can put in place a system where it would get closer to that housing benefit model where more people are eligible but the subsidy declines with income, up to a point at which they start paying market rent. Again, that does not seem to be on the cards at the moment.