Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I am interested in the comments on single person households and I agree that the scale of the family homelessness crisis and the increase in the number of children involved has taken the media focus away from single person households. My real concern is that none of the 50% priority allocations made by the Dublin local authorities went to single people because local authorities do not, by and large, have single person units. In South Dublin County Council, for example, the number of single unit allocations made in a given year might be one or two and that is from all the lists and not just from the priority list. Ms Randall made a proposal for 100% allocations but the majority of those will be two-bedroom, three-bedroom or four-bedroom units and they will still not work for the majority of long-term single homeless households about which we have been talking. How do we deal with that?

Some local authorities are applying HAP and for new entrants, or people coming from emergency accommodation into rental, HAP has a higher level of supplement than rent supplement. I am not a fan of HAP and would like to see that scheme changed because the HAP levels for single person households are as bad as the old rent supplement levels. Can the witnesses comment on that? Have they had experience of people encountering difficulties in accessing HAP accommodation as single persons because of its lower limits?