Brendan Ryan (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Families in my constituency have been on the list for ten years and have now been removed for being a few hundred euro over the limit. Why is that? In one case, a mother returned to part-time work to help the family meet the increased rent of €1,100 a month. On one level, as the family is under pressure for rent the mother went back to work but then the family becomes ineligible for social housing. They have been told they have been removed from the list but they have not been told how much they are over the limit, making appealing the decision even more difficult. By their own calculations they are no more than a few hundred euro over the very modest limits and those limits were set in 2011.

Perversely, people who found themselves threatened by homelessness in recent times have managed to be on the housing assistance payment, HAP. People who may have been on the list at the same time as others have now gone into HAP and are in the system for ever. Due to the inefficiency of the system and the lack of housing and housing offers, that family has reached a point 12 years on where their income has increased slightly and now they are off the list. If they had been accepted onto HAP, and been lucky enough to get HAP, they would still be in the system. It is a case of either being under a limit and getting everything or being over a limit and getting nothing. We have to restructure that.

We need to increase the base levels and make them adequate for the current market. The cap of 2.5% per child up to four children, with a maximum of 10%, needs to be removed. If a family has six or eight kids, they need to get the benefit of that 2.5% of base level per child. We talked about FIS already and I refer to the list in item No. 7 on page 3 in respect of incomes which are not assessable. One thing the Minster of State can do straight away is to make FIS non-assessable. That is a no-brainer.

There needs to be a complete review of social housing eligibility because we are probably the only country in Europe which has assessment of income as the model. Many countries do not. We need to assess people's ability to provide housing for themselves rather than have an income point that decides if someone is either in or out. That is completely wrong. On clarifying what we need to do, while we are waiting for the review, the Minister of State needs to issue a directive to all local authorities that nobody should be taken off the list while the review is continuing. That is a simple measure that can be done.

See this speech in context