Mr. John-Mark McCafferty:

I will start off and then hand over to Ms Stakem. I thank the Deputy for her questions. She asked about discrimination. It goes back to a point made by Senator Fitzpatrick. We assist with representing tenants who face discrimination at the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. The numbers are relatively low. However, our experience is that tenants generally cannot hang around. They need to be housed and if they are facing barriers, they will move to the next landlord to try to source accommodation. We asked ourselves whether this is an issue that is raising its head. Many of the tenants just need to move on. It is only in certain circumstances, such as tenants having sourced housing elsewhere, that they have, if one likes, the "luxury" of pursuing such a course.

We welcome the increase in units. The impact of Covid-19 on tenancies generally is the stuff of research really. We will be seeking to carry out further research in the coming year because what we are seeing and what the ESRI indicated earlier this year is that the sectors in which renters work are those that have been disproportionately affected in terms of lay-offs and redundancies. However, there has been a significant protective effect from the pandemic unemployment payment and access to rent supplement. I am struck by the low take-up of rent supplement this year, given the circumstances. I wonder why that is the case because a much more pragmatic approach was certainly taken in terms of the processing of applications and access to the supplement.

I wonder also about the issue of arrears. There is a natural assumption that arrears are building, yet there is a low number of arrears coming through the new legislative system that is dealing with arrears. There are several things to which we need to pay further attention.

I too would be interested to know what is triggering or not triggering those changes. The principle of HAP is that it incentivises work and it should be responsive to changes in income and rents because there is a big issue facing the wider social housing sector and the local authority sector where local authorities are kind of hobbled by rent levels.