Ms Marcella Stakem:

I might return to Senator Boyhan's point that affordability is key. The issue of standards also came out as significant when we interviewed members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, SVP. This is probably because they are going into people homes and seeing how and where they are living. There are practical things we could do to improve standards. We should not wait until a full review is carried out. There are practical things we could do, such as increasing the number of inspections and looking at incentives for landlords to allow them to improve energy efficiency within the private rented sector.

As regards the roll-out of affordable housing, we certainly hope that what is in the programme for Government materialises. We have real concerns that the numbers are not sufficient. We need to see a much more ambitious plan given the scale of the housing and homelessness crisis. We support many people who are in hidden homelessness and so do not appear in the homelessness numbers and may not be on social housing waiting lists. There is a significant number of people within that category and they are forgotten about. That is why we are really concerned about hidden homelessness and feel the programme for Government may not be ambitious enough.