Mr. John-Mark McCafferty:

Yes. I thank the Chairman. I will briefly give some context and then I might answer questions Nos. 1 and 2. Mr. Guy has answered Nos. 3 to 7.

In broad terms, there is a fundamental lack of supply coupled with insecurities within the private rental sector. The housing waiting list system is couched in a system whereby, from the point of view of the local authorities, construction, vacancies and acquisition are predominantly of three and four-bedroom houses, yet we have an ageing population and an increasing number of households in smaller housing units. There are many single-adult households. What is required on the macro scale is a greater balance in construction and acquisition to reflect the nature of the list itself.

Of particular interest to Threshold, as the national housing charity working with renters, is the level of priority given to the transfer list which impacts on HAP, and the issue of responding to hidden homelessness. Mr. Guy mentioned the ETHOS definitions and the broader typology of what homelessness is and how it presents. Regarding the new scheme of lettings that Dublin City Council has been debating, many of our clients are arguably in very challenging and worse positions than certain households in emergency accommodation settings and are, in effect, homeless. They are sofa-surfing and sleeping on people's floors. That has to be reflected in allocations.

On HAP, there is clearly a lack of security of tenure. While we welcome many things the HAP system brings, the differential rent scheme and recent legislative improvements in security of tenure, clearly there is much stronger security of tenure when based in a local authority house or an approved body housing unit.

I will respond briefly to question No. 1. When filling in the housing needs assessment form, our advisers, such as Mr. Guy, have an extensive sense of the process. Once households get approved for a housing list, however, the advice is usually to find a house using HAP. Beyond that, we have limited knowledge of the system.

The waiting list system does not work as effectively as it could. There is no unified electronic system across all local authorities and no national standard in the methodology of assessing housing needs and the scheme of letting priorities.

A lot of these issues are debated and decided at local level. We welcome Dublin City Council's attempts to try to have a conversation about rebalancing that transfer list to make more allocations from that list.