Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 38:

In page 63, to delete lines 31 to 34 and substitute the following:"(2) (a) A housing authority may, if a tenant has refused to pay rent for a specified period of no less than 3 months and has refused to engage with the relevant authority, make a request to the Minister for Social Protection to deduct from net scheme payments the amount of rent payable to the authority by the relevant recipient concerned and to transmit the amount deducted to the authority.".

These amendments seek to deal with the hardship that results when rent deductions are made from social welfare payments. They set out what should happen if tenants refuse to engage and call on the Department of Social Protection to give tenants ten days notice before any deduction is made. I am also proposing that a report should be compiled within six months of any deduction. I am very uncomfortable with the idea of moneys that are owed being mandatorily deducted from social protection payments. I recognise that tenants must pay their rent. Evictions on the grounds of rent arrears or non-payment of rent should be avoided at all costs. This method of retrieving owed rent moneys should not be availed of other than in the most extreme cases. I refer, for example, to a case in which someone has owed rent and has refused to engage with the council over a sustained period. This method should not be used to end the practice of councils working with tenants who have fallen behind to reschedule payments through mediation. These issues should be dealt with by means of this very positive process in the first instance.

Many tenants have fallen behind on rent at one time or another. Due to the very small supply of social housing, it is the preserve for the most part of the most disadvantaged communities in our society. It can be very difficult for many tenants, especially older tenants, to manage their money. This has increasingly been the case during the recent years of austerity. Many families have had to choose between paying the rent and keeping the light on or food on the table. Countless heads have been kept above water in bad times because such decisions have been facilitated by councils that have shown flexibility. Amendment No. 39 provides that: "No single deduction ... may be made if it would reasonably cause undue hardship or suffering to the tenant concerned or their dependents."

Many other deductions are being made by the Department of Social Protection at present. Deductions are being made for the purposes of the household charge and they will be made when water charges come along. Now they are to be made for rent arrears. It goes against all my principles to make this mandatory. People need flexibility when bills come in. They do not know when they are going to come in. They have to make a little sacrifice every now and again, before catching up later. That is the way many people work, whether we like it or not. They have no choice other than to act in this manner.

The concept of giving someone the power to make a deduction from a social welfare payment is alien to me. However, it has increasingly been a part of the way this Government has operated. It crept under the radar when it was first brought in and used in the cases of the household charge and the other charges that were introduced. It is very offensive to people to have their control of their own moneys taken from them. The Department is taking more and more control of their moneys. I think it is a really bad way of doing business. This was brought in by the Labour Party, along with its colleagues. I think they got away with murder when they did this in the first place. That is why I am proposing these amendments.

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