Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I listened to the Minister of State's speech. While the Government may claim it is doing everything it can to assist people, the reality is that assistance is not reaching many of them. That is the experience I come across every day of the week and I am sure the Minister of State and other Deputies come across the same experience.

Last week a lady called to my constituency office. I will call her Anne. She has two children and is renting. The landlord said he was selling the house and she needed to go elsewhere. She could either go to a place that would not take housing assistance payment, HAP, or get nowhere. Because she ended up with a landlord who would not take HAP, that resulted in a 35% increase in her rent. She works in a fast-food chain on minimum wage. She is trying to raise two children, one of whom is on the autism spectrum with all the additional costs that come with that. Her experience is the same as that of thousands of others who are in desperate situations. The cost-of-living crisis is grinding them into the ground. This woman told me that some days of the week they eat beans because there is nothing else. If she does not do that, she will not have enough to pay the rent.

We need to find means to address that type of situation, other than telling people to go to the community welfare officer. She has gone to the community welfare officer several times when there were other crises and she knows that she will be refused if she keeps going back there. The reality is that we cannot treat people in this manner. We need to recognise that poverty is real for these people. The only way we can deal with it is to ensure we have adequate support for them and move these people into better employment on proper wages. While the Government can talk about the minimum wage increasing, the reality is that the minimum wage is a trap in poverty for most of them.

The Minister of State spoke about the fuel allowance and other things. Most of those are for people who, unfortunately, are in receipt of social welfare and have no other option. Many of us meet other people who are not on social welfare and are in low-paid jobs. They are also in a trap, trying to raise a family, trying to pay mortgages or rent, and caught in a situation they simply cannot get out of. We need action from Government. We put forward firm proposals and the Government needs to embrace those proposals. The Government should support the Bill by implementing it.

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