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

On the point Deputy Mairéad Farrell brought up, may I try to elaborate on the question about the cost of the HAP, RAS and leasing schemes and the current expenditure threat, that is, the financial threat of the current expenditure between those schemes being €1 billion, with rents going up and, therefore, the potential for the payments under those schemes to go up? The point which the Opposition makes and which the Government sort of acknowledges is that we would be better off phasing out and moving away from those schemes and that if we had our own housing stock, we would be able to start to reduce reliance on the HAP, RAS and leasing payments. I know that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, in the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service, IGEES, report, has more or less made that point as well. I know that the witnesses are not the policymakers, but is there a plan to get to a point at which we wean ourselves off those schemes? Do the witnesses get my point? Often in this debate the point is made that we cannot get rid of the HAP, RAS and leasing schemes immediately, and of course we cannot, but is there a plan to phase them out whereby, at a certain point, the scale of social and public housing provision we have projected we will deliver will get us to a point at which we no longer have to rely on HAP and RAS leasing? I am talking about the financial projections of that, of large current expenditures year on year starting to reduce because another thing is happening, that is, that people are moving out of HAP and RAS tenancies and into permanent public housing, whereby there is no longer a big current expenditure. Do the witnesses get my point? Maybe I am not explaining it very well, but do they see a point at which we will no longer have that reliance? Are there projections of that sort? Such a policy is talked about but I do not see it.