Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Even before the introduction of the housing assistance payment scheme, there was often a significant problem where tenants sought transfers or were made offers where those offers were felt to be completely unworkable from the point of view of the tenant but were deemed to be acceptable by the local authority, particularly where matters to do with proximity to school for children or proximity to supports, such as family or local community, were an issue but were not considered by the local authority as reasonable grounds to refuse an offer when they should have been. In my experience, it is quite common that tenants would be offered accommodation which, from their point of view, is in far-flung areas away out of the area in which they are normally used to living, where their children go to school or where they have support networks.

That problem, if it existed previously, will be massively compounded by what the Minister of State is talking about with the housing assistance programme. It is already starting to happen. Where landlords who are in arrangements with the local authority through the HAP scheme decide, as they undoubtedly will on a regular basis, to pull out of those arrangements for whatever reason, the local authority will be overwhelmed with tenants to whom it has an obligation but who it simply has no means to house. The local authorities do not have the local authority housing stock and they do not have other private landlords with whom they will be able to house tenants. This will increase the pressure on the local authorities to push tenants into accepting accommodation which they should not have to accept and then if the tenants do not accept it, they will be penalised. What Deputy Ellis proposes is the minimum safeguard that tenants could expect in order that they have some flexibility and room to manoeuvre to refuse certain offers if they have reasonable grounds for doing so.

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