Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

Deputy Hanafin is the Minister for Social and Family Affairs and a Minister of State responsible for housing has been reappointed. In addition, there is a Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and a Minister for Finance, yet, between them, they cannot deal with the issue of landlords. How many more times are we going to discuss in the House the fact that there is still no link between rent supplement paid to landlords and checks to ensure those landlords are paying tax out of the moneys paid to them by the State in respect of their properties? We have raised this at committees, including with the Revenue Commissioners, and in the House. Those responsible just nod and say they are considering the matter. How long more will we be considering it? When will we see something happen? It is very easy to take €6 more from a tenant after having taken the same from him or her in October. It may be a bit tougher to put in place the system I advocate but there is no reason it is not in place, as it should be. That it is not is a failure on the Minister's part. We have discussed it time and again and it needs to be fast-tracked. Surely when trying to make savings, ensuring that we get the most from the taxation system would be a sensible place to start.

Threshold has asked, quite reasonably, what support the Department is to offer regarding the process of negotiating rent reductions. It is a fair question because there should be support for tenants. Some landlords will take advantage of a vulnerable person, particularly in areas where there may not be many alternative properties. The principle of reducing rent supplement with falling market rent is important but the blanket approach adopted will only result in hardship for many vulnerable people. It is not the best approach.

It has been suggested that the Minister should set up a system whereby, rather than having a community welfare officer hand over a deposit to a tenant for a landlord, that deposit would be held in an account and made available to the landlord if the property were not handed back in good condition. Currently the deposit is paid directly to the landlord and tenants find it very difficult to recover it at the end of their tenancy. Threshold has estimated that the Department could save between €6 million and €7 million per year if my proposal were implemented. I have asked the Minister about this in the past and I again ask her to examine it. The deposit holding scheme I advocate would save the State money and would make more sense. Since tenants will have to shop around owing to the reduction in the supplement, the holding scheme, if implemented, will mean their deposits will be refundable because the landlords will not get their hands on them unless, for whatever reason, the tenants leave the properties in poor condition.

The Minister's decision in the budget to increase by €6 the minimum contribution to rent supplement after a similar increase in the October budget is extremely unfair and will make life really difficult for poorer vulnerable tenants. The changes to the maximum rent figure to which the supplement applies were sufficient and what the Minister has done in increasing the contribution will make it extremely difficult to access accommodation because of the amount tenants themselves will have to pay. On the submission made by Focus Ireland, will the Minister ensure no person will become homeless as a result of the changes made to the rent supplement and jobseeker's allowance schemes? Despite the money available and, to some extent, squandered in the past 12 years, the Government did not do what could have been done to tackle the issue of homelessness. Despite the existence of a Minister of State with responsibility for housing, the matter still seems to fall between a number of Departments. There are real concerns that there will be difficulties in that regard.

I am glad the Minister stated she would table an amendment on young persons who have left State care. That is important. She also needs to examine the position of young persons who have left the family home which I fully appreciate is a much more tricky issue. Their position is not as simple as that of young persons who have left State care but there are situations where there is a severe breakdown within families for one reason or another, as a result of which young persons are forced to leave. There are young persons who have not had to go into State care because they are aged 17 or 18 years but they are still in the vulnerable position to which I refer. Perhaps community welfare officers who tend to know the persons concerned should have the flexibility to make a payment in such circumstances rather than see a young person, by reason of drugs or alcoholism in their own case or in the case of somebody else in the family home, being left vulnerable if homeless as a result.

The Bill compounds the attack on families that took place in Budget 2009. In addition to charges, taxes and the pain being felt by everybody else, in a double whammy those with young children are being hit through the loss of the early child care supplement, while those with children in their late teens will be hit through the introduction of third level fees. In the next budget those with children of any age will be hit through some form of change to child benefit. The budget of October 2008 made every household pay for Fianna Fáil's mistakes and the emergency budget of 2009 has ensured every family will pay on the double.

What is laughable about the changes to the early child care supplement and the introduction of a year's free preschool place, if the matter was not so serious, is that in recent years Fine Gael and the Labour Party made this proposal and tried to persuade the Government which then had the money of the importance of preschool education. During 12 years of what the Government certainly thought were unlimited resources, it failed to introduce such a provision. I remember debating the matter here with the Minister, Deputy Hanafin, on one occasion when she questioned the educational value of preschool education.

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