Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy and extend my good wishes to her and to everybody else in the House for a happy and peaceful Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous new year.

In respect of rent supplement, I will first reiterate what I have stated previously. The approach my Department has been taking is that it has been particularly involved in trying to identify families who are at risk of losing their rented accommodation because landlords are in many cases suddenly seeking hugely increased rents. While this certainly is a problem, what my Department has been and is doing is to emphasise a case-by-case management approach to each individual family in difficulty, which I believe to be the best approach. However, the core underlying problem - the Deputy and I have discussed this previously and I believe we both agree - is that for a long time either no social housing or insufficient social housing has been built in Ireland.

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