Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am very glad to hear that. Has the Minister quantified the cost, because it would have budgetary implications? I believe the thresholds should be raised substantially. That group of people whose income is in excess of €35,000 or perhaps up to €40,000 is still eligible depending on family size, but they are pushed over a cliff. Some of those people are in homeless accommodation as we speak and are now not even entitled to that. They are being threatened with eviction from homeless accommodation because they have gone over a threshold, having been on a housing list for ten years. To be honest, you could not make this stuff up in terms of what is going on. This is life and death stuff for some of them due to the situation they are in. On that level of income, they have no chance of paying the rents in Dublin and they have no chance of purchasing. The Government says the affordable housing schemes are coming and all the rest of it, but we are quite a few years away from them having any impact - even if they work - and there are question marks in that regard for that cohort. I refer to people earning above €35,000, and even up to €50,000 or €60,000. This is urgent.

In his discussions, has the Minister even quantified what it might cost? For example, if we push the threshold up to €40,000, it will cost this much. If we push it up to €45,000, it will cost this much. If we push it up to €50,000, it will cost this much. If the Minister has not quantified it - I take his word that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is not blocking this - and if that is what he tells me, I believe it, but is it even part of the Minister's budgetary considerations? If it is not, that tells me we are not going to have the thresholds moved before the budget, which is a very serious breach of promise, because we were told by the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage - and I have been told by the Taoiseach on a number of occasions - that the outcome of that review was going to be made public before the summer recess. That promise has already been broken. The Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, is saying it is not him blocking it, but he is not quite sure when all this is happening. He has just told me he does not have figures on that. If we do not know how it is going to impact on the budget then that tells me we are not going to hear about this any time soon.