Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)
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That is my point. There are 40,000 individual landlords who are being allowed to extract the maximum value for them. Who is representing the State on the other side? Often, it is very vulnerable people who have to secure those properties. We do not in any way support people to negotiate and they are often in very vulnerable circumstances. They could be leaving emergency accommodation. Whatever the circumstances, people just want a house and their biggest challenge is whether they get enough money out of HAP to secure a property. My point is there is a structural problem here, where we have nearly €600 million to spend and we will never get good value because we have 40,000 negotiators. There is no other element of procurement on behalf of the State where we would allow 40,000 people to negotiate that total spend.