Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

While I understand where the Minister is coming from in this regard, the people who she should be looking after are the meat in the sandwich between private landlords and the community welfare officers. I do not believe there is a Member of this House who has not had people in his or her constituency clinic reporting they received a letter from the community welfare office telling them to go back to their landlord and ask for reduced rates. The Minister has just confirmed this. It is distressing that she does not have numbers in regard to how successful these renegotiations were. She cannot state this has not led to homelessness because she does not know that, yet she included that platitude at the end. We have all come across cases of people on rental supplement, with very little income and bargaining power, who, in many cases, when the community welfare officer tells them they must get a cheaper place while the landlord tells them he or she will not reduce the rent, have had to leave and try to find new accommodation. It may be at a cheaper price but what happens in the meantime? That is the issue with which I have a problem. When people change their address they are no longer eligible to be on the local authority social housing list, must provide details of their new address and be assessed in terms of this accommodation and whosoever else might be living at the new address, all of which can take a considerable time. We know how complicated the form is for getting onto the social housing list. Many community welfare officers are not paying rental supplement in the intervening period because the people are not on the social housing list to begin with.

The Minister might offer an observation on having the rental supplement dealt with by the housing department in the local authority which would bring a joined-up approach to the issue.

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