Dr. Ciara Fitzpatrick:

I will address Deputy Wynne's question on discretionary housing payments and how they compare to the HAP system in the South. Dr. Boland might come in on the South and I will talk about discretionary housing payments. It is an example of how payments have become more discretionary in nature. When housing benefit is not high enough to meet the demands of tenants' rent, they can apply for a discretionary housing payment, which is effectively a top-up to help them meet the cost of their rent. However, discretionary housing payments are limited in nature. Once the money is gone out of the pot it is gone, so it can only help a certain number of people. Maybe Mr. Brady will keep me right here, but discretionary housing payments are currently on freeze in Northern Ireland because the money has run out of the budget. That feeds directly into Senator Black's question around how the lack of government is impacting on those people who are currently suffering intensely from the cost-of-living crisis. That is just one small example but it is significant in the lives of those people who do not have a lot of money. They cannot now access discretionary housing payments because that pot of money has gone and there is no government-allocated budget that will provide people with that facility. We will, therefore, see people fall into arrears, unable to pay their rent, and prioritising the need for food over the need for heat and so on and so forth. All that leads to a spiral of destitution.

I cannot overstate the impact of no government on the lives of ordinary people in Northern Ireland at present. It is severe, chronic and devastating. We had an event at Parliament Buildings in September, Crushed by the Cost-of-Living Crisis, where people suffering from poverty and destitution spoke about their experiences. Everybody who was there, which included many colleagues across the political spectrum, agreed it was harrowing listening. Here we are in April and we have still have had no progress. The Northern Ireland Act 1998 made a commitment to an anti-poverty strategy and 25 years later we are without that strategy. The most recent paper on the childcare strategy was published in 1999 and in 2023, we are no further on.

It is safe to say that working in this area of social policy, as I do, is incredibly difficult and frustrating. I take a lot of hope from the prospect of a new, compassionate, caring human rights-based system. Again, that is a very personal reflection but this situation is having a very difficult impact on people across the whole of the North.