Ms Louise Bayliss:

Just going back to the last speaker's question, which I had my hand up for, and the issue of childcare and the provision of it, many lone parents face a gap in that the hours are usually between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Lone parents usually work in hospitality or retail meaning they are working evenings and weekends when there is no childcare available. That is a major issue lone parents face and there is no subsidy towards the cost of the childcare. For instance, I know for a fact that Ms Smith cannot avail of the national childcare scheme and must pay privately to have her child minded. That is one issue I wanted to point out.

On Deputy Ward's point, HAP is a huge issue for people in SPARK. As the Deputy is probably aware, when people go onto homeless HAP their rent is calculated based on a social housing model for year 1. In year 2, the rent can go up again but the HAP rate may not necessarily follow. It has come down to a 2% increase annually now but it was at 4%. Suddenly people were paying an additional 4% that the HAP was not meeting. That has been going on and on cumulatively. We have people who are in the same housing estate where one is paying a €90 or €100 top-up to his or her landlord out of a social welfare payment of €240 and somebody else is paying the correct payment of the social housing assessment of 12% or 15% of their income, depending on the area they are living in. That is causing huge difficulties for people. They know that if they lose that home they will likely end up homeless so they struggle to pay these massive top-ups to the landlord that are not being met by HAP. I absolutely agree with the Deputy's point that HAP and increasing HAP is not the solution. However, in the short term, as a measure for families and the children we know are going hungry at night-time so their parents can pay the HAP top-ups, we are asking for HAP to be increased to match until we can bring the market in line and bring in the other measures the Deputy mentioned like rent freezes, capping of market rents and obviously ultimately, a social housing model that works and ensures our children are in safe, secure housing at affordable rents. Until that time, the top-ups are really crucifying many of our families.