Mr. Mike Allen:

I would make exactly the same points. An appeals system needs to be in place.

To deal with the point made by Senator Cummins, a well administered system and clear legislation can have a good appeals system. The social welfare appeals system is an exemplar of that. Unfortunately, it is very often the case that the poorest and most marginalised people are those who are deprived of an appeals system. The only appeals system is the law and that requires a substantial income. An appeals system is very definitely needed. It would be very useful in itself to have a clear statement that eligibility to social housing is not a requirement for provision of emergency shelter, which can be a humanitarian response. We need to think about this. We do not want to have large numbers of people in our emergency homeless system with no route out of it. That is a genuine issue. By no means is it as extensive as the Department seems to believe but it is an issue. Everybody should sit down and talk at a practical level about how we can resolve that and provide solutions.

In the argument about the general scheme, a number of Deputies and Senators have asked us how many people this would affect. The people who propose legislation should be saying what the scale of the problem is and what impact it will have on us. I have seen no evidence that this is actually an issue. I accept that people are worried about it but nobody has actually said that significant numbers of people who have no long-term commitment to Ireland are getting on the social housing list. The Department need to dig into that and present that sort of data to inform the committee's decision-making.