Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

There are cases in which reduced pensions have been awarded where there was an expectation of a full pension. In some cases, this involves people who had been working for decades. If the Minister of State wishes to see some of those cases, I will send him the details.

However, the area of greatest difficulty has been the head-in-the-sand approach to rent assistance levels. I remember being beside Deputy Joan Collins when raising the issue about how out of kilter they were with market rents, as well as being beside her when she raised the same issue. This was not last month or last year; it was two and three years ago when people were coming through the system and were struggling to find accommodation because the rent assistance levels were far below market rent. The response of the Minister for Social Protection was almost exclusively to state it was a supply-side issue while at the same time, the Government did nothing about the supply of housing. Consequently, that supply-side issue and the resistance to changing those rent caps in any meaningful way has meant this situation has worsened substantially. We now face a crisis that is of a scale that will be incredibly difficult to deal with in the short term. I am quite certain the Minister of State is meeting people in his clinic who are presenting with precisely the same set of problems they are raising with me. Essentially, this was a matter that was foreseeable, predictable and about which something could have been done. If one considers the package of social welfare measures over the past five years, this has been the single greatest failure.

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