Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Rather than addressing the question, the reply encapsulates the problem. The Minister of State indicated that HAP tenants who avail of inter-authority movement can be offered access to the housing transfer list of the original local authority. That is exactly what I said. The constituent I mentioned was a young woman when she went on the housing list. She is now a much older married woman with children. Her circumstances have changed, but her need for permanent housing has not. It has travelled with her. She has been living in Balbriggan for almost 12 years and is about to be offered a house elsewhere. It is a good thing to be offered a local authority home, but she has to uproot her four children and go all the way to another area which is not easy for kids to do. In addition, at the time she was not told that this was a potential consequence. The Minister of State also said in her reply that the practical operation of the transfer list is a matter for each local authority to manage. I respectfully suggest that it should not be the case because guidance and consistency are clearly needed. It is different when a person is transferring from one local authority to another. More importantly, people are not told this. As I said earlier, it is not on the forms or in the guidance and it is not explained to them. When people sign up for HAP, they are effectively giving up any claim they would have to a place on the list in the place where they are living because that is not the original authority.

In the case of the woman I am talking about, her local authority was originally Dublin City Council so she is heading to the city and uprooting her kids. It is not any one person's fault; it is a systems error. I am dealing with many cases at the moment but there are three in particular where people have to make very hard decisions over the next while. Perhaps the Minister of State could recommend this to the Minister, Deputy O'Brien. It is in the programme for Government and it is something the Government said it was going to do, but it has not been done yet. Some class of guidance needs to be issued. If they are not going to change the system, people need to be told what way it operates.

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