Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

One of the blockages is that many of these people are not the responsibility of the local authority. If the authority houses them, it does not necessarily mean it is reducing its own list. They might be reducing the social welfare lists but they are not reducing the housing list, and in my view, that is one of the blockages. For this reason, last year, we insisted on people having a full housing assessment and when being deemed to be in need of housing that the local authority would take responsibility for them. There is, therefore, some incentive for the local authority to house them. This is one element.

A second element, which I am not sure is fully addressed, is the difference between what one pays as a personal contribution towards rent against what one would pay on the differential rents scheme in Dublin, for example. Under the rent supplement scheme a person pays €24 while the average in Dublin is €58 but the minimum is €25. This may be an issue.

As the Deputy said, we all have constituents who talk to us. A girl came to see me recently who has turned down two offers of housing because they were not in areas she wanted and yet she is still receiving a rent supplement. I can see that this is also a difficulty. Unfortunately the longer she is left on the rent supplement the more secure her children become in school and in that local community and she will only accept a house within that area. These are genuine issues. On the question as to whether the target for this year is under-ambitious, I like targets that can be achieved and as I indicated in my reply, the amount of affordable housing stock available is an opportunity to increase that number.

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