Ms Sinéad Breathnach:

It is a huge issue for us. Outside the Dublin region, our HAP discretionary increase is 20% and not 50%. At the moment the affordability gap between the actual rents and the HAP rates, especially for single people, is too wide. Even with that increase and reducing the differential rent we cannot close that gap. It is blocking a lot of our hostels and STAs at the moment. There have been few or no move-ons for single people in the past 12 to 18 months because of this factor. We have requested that the 50% discretionary rate be rolled out nationally and I understand a review of that has been carried out so we hope to hear from that shortly.