Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am very concerned, as I know Deputy Catherine Murphy is, about any family which has problems securing a long-term tenancy or ownership of a family home. We all share a common objective to ensure that as many as possible of our people are properly housed. That was the purpose of yesterday’s announcement by the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Kelly, the largest committed investment by this State in a very long time to a programme of social housing which will see all of the people on the waiting list housed over the next few years. It did not deal with all the money being spent this year to bring back some of the 2,000 flats and houses currently boarded up or ‘voided’, which is the term used by the local authorities. They are coming back and we anticipate that over the next six to nine months, 1,000 of those will be made habitable for families who need homes.

I want to correct one misunderstanding the Deputy may have about rent supplement. There is no reduction in the funding for renting homes in the private sector. In the Estimates for next year there is a provision to move a significant part of the current rent supplement budget dealt with in the Department of Social Protection to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government to fund the move and the development of people moving onto the housing assistance payment. This reform has been widely welcomed because it will remove one significant difficulty for families on rent supplement, that very often if they get an employment opportunity they are not in a position to take up the employment because they may be at risk of losing their rent supplement. I assure the Deputy that there is no reduction whatsoever. There are just under 73,000 families or households availing of rent supplement at a cost of an estimated €344 million for this year. The same kind of costs will be incurred next year but some of them will be in the budget for the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government with those families who move to a long-term arrangement with a county council. There are very significant funds being used to address homelessness.

Of course people become homeless for a variety of different reasons. The protocol which has been in operation since the middle of June between the Department of Social Protection, organisations like Focus Ireland and the local authorities in the Dublin region has successfully secured ongoing tenancies for over 220 families. I want us to start looking at rent supplement cases on a case-by-case basis. There are two issues here. First, the community welfare service has discretion in law to raise the rent supplement.

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