Sheila Terry (Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister for his reply. I greatly welcome that he abolished the six month rule that applied to eligibility for rent supplement. I can understand the thinking behind it, but perhaps it did not extend to the people on whom it would impact. As public representatives, we have all met, heard and received letters from people who deal with the homeless in particular. Homeless people have suffered as a result of that rule. There was no way many people were in a position to rent in the private sector. If they were able to rent in that sector for six months in the first place, one would expect that they should have been able to continue paying rent after the six month period. Therefore, it was an impossible rule to implement or it seemed impossible for people to work out how they would get rent supplement at the end of the six months period.

I agree with the Minister that the only way out of this problem is to provide housing. Expenditure under this scheme is a dreadful way to spend money, although it is essential at present. We need only think of all the other things we could do with that money, if it was not being paid out to private landlords. While we need private landlords at present in this context, if they were not there we would be in a worse situation as the Government would be forced to act. Only last week we saw the list of the number of houses local authorities had built for people on their housing lists. That was a shameful list. Many local authorities had not built the required numbers of houses, which is not good enough. While this is not the Minister's brief, it impacts greatly on his Department. If local authorities are not spending their resources and building the required number of houses, this impacts on the Department of Social and Family Affairs and means that money is being spent on rent supplement when it could be spent on other ways of tackling poverty. It requires a Government decision to force the local authorities to increase the number of houses they build each year. Perhaps 48,000 households are now on the housing list. It seems an impossible job to tackle this but we must quickly do so. I thank the Minister for his response.