Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Minister of State for being here to take this Topical Issue matter. I will use an individual case, but I will not say the woman's full name. I am raising the case on behalf of a person to highlight the issue I have, which is about the limitations of the supplementary welfare allowance and the manner in which it is applied. It often seems that a decision is made by the Department of Social Protection that a scheme will be put in place to respond to a need, but the scheme is then not changed and not adapted. I will illustrate my point with an example.

I am raising this issue on behalf of a woman by the name of Diane. She has survived cancer twice and during that time the mortgage on her apartment was, unbeknownst to her - let us be fair; she had a lot going on - sold to a well known vulture fund. She was struggling to repay her mortgage. A payment plan of €597 per month was agreed. She was in receipt of the other supplement, the former mortgage interest supplement, which meant she was able to keep a roof over her head. Diane has been under a lot of financial pressure on top of the fact that she is very unwell. One thing is feeding the other. The financial pressure is feeding the ill health, etc. On 17 June 2025 she received a letter from the Department of Social Protection telling her she is to be excluded from receipt of the supplement because the arrears outstanding on the loan are of such magnitude that the payment of a supplement is considered inappropriate. This puts her in a very precarious and scary place, as I am sure the Minister of State will agree. The woman is gravely ill. She has to have equipment fitted in her house and now she is in danger of losing the house.

I used this as an example because we are in the middle of a housing crisis. If this were 25 years ago, the Minister of State might say it is tough, but she will have to rent and there is support available for that and so on. However, the truth is that there is nowhere for her to rent. She is too sick to go into emergency accommodation. I do not know whether the Minister of State has seen it. This is with no disrespect to the people who work in it, because I am sure they are doing their best, but you would not want to be in it in the whole of your health, never mind gravely ill.

I have engaged with the Department of Social Protection on her behalf. The response I got is that she can appeal the decision. The Minister of State and I both know what the result of the appeal will be. I understand she will tell me she cannot pre-empt it and I do not want to either, but I have a feeling the appeal will go the same way as the application because the grounds on which it was refused still stand. This is the scheme of last resort, if you will. This is where people go when they have been everywhere else. There are currently 26,000 people in mortgage arrears. Some of them have a mortgage that has been sold to a vulture fund, others do not. Illnesses and personal circumstances are a really big push factor in people going into long-term arrears. Everyone deserves to stay in their home. This example is somewhat of an outlier, but it illustrates the fact that the supplementary welfare allowance is not adequate for the demands being made on it at the moment. It has not kept pace with what is happening currently and it is not fit for purpose in the housing crisis we are in at the moment.

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