Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge what Deputy Carey said. He is right that a key to unlocking this issue is income disregards. He pointed out the case of a family that he has been dealing with. Local authorities have discretion regarding payments that are one-off or temporary in nature and can disregard them. There is potentially more space for such discretion because vulnerable people in receipt of income supports such as the working family payment currently exceed the amounts in the housing means test. We will look at that. It should be seen in the context of the Affordable Housing Bill. We need mixed tenure developments. In some quarters in the House, we hear people call for that and yet they consistently vote against it. It is interesting to hear the debate about the Oscar Traynor site and other big sites in Dublin that are still lying idle and derelict.

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