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

I welcome the positive indications that the Minister and Minister of State are giving and the fact that the Minister met the regional managers and CWOs. That is a positive development and I hope it pans out. I genuinely welcome the intervention of the Minister of State around the particular case I raised. I am seeking as strong an assurance as I can get on this issue. The rent cap for someone with a couple of children in Dún Laoghaire is €975, but there is absolutely nothing for €975, €1,075 or €1,175 there. A person might get something for €1,200, but that person would have to be rather lucky. More likely, he would get something, not altogether brilliant, for €1,300.

A further three people came to my office this week who are in this situation. They asked whether they will go homeless, what services are available and how the system works. I have put it to them that the Minister is saying there is flexibility and if a person can find somewhere that is the best place he can find and which is reasonable, at least we can argue the case for him. However, we are encountering difficulty even when we refer people to Threshold. In the case I brought to the attention of the Minister of State last week, we had referred the people in question to Threshold but it could not get the community welfare officer to move either. It only happened as a result of the intervention of the Minister of State. While I appreciate the intervention of the Minister of State, we cannot do that for every case. There must be genuine flexibility and a reasonableness on the part of community welfare officers. They should be able to decide that a given rent level is fair and they should be able to prevent a person falling into homelessness.

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