Ms Andrea Fitzgerald:

It is our experience on the front line that accessing the HAP scheme and engaging with private landlords has definitely become increasingly difficult. As we are all aware, the housing market is very tight anyway. Covid and lockdowns have compounded the problem so the availability is not there in the first instance. Locally, we would have always forged positive relationships with certain landlords that we had done business with previously. Unfortunately, that market has completely dried up now. It is increasingly difficult if new landlords come into the market to broker new relationships because, as the Deputy correctly said, there are preconceived notions about what that might look like. We are successful in some instances because we have existing relationships with some private landlords but we have not had so much success in other cases.