Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

If they cannot afford it, they should not be in it and they should not expect the State to pay the rent for them. We are not a rental agency. The rent supplement is in place to support people who when they entered rented accommodation could afford it because they were in employment, but who have since lost their jobs and cannot pay the rent. It is designed as a short-term support. Unfortunately, some people have been in receipt of the support for too long and that also needs to be examined. We have to have that built-in criterion that one should be in rented accommodation for some time before one receives rent supplement; otherwise the State will end up paying hundreds of thousands of euro. We will spend €500 million on rent supplement this year while the individual pays €24. That is acceptable if someone has fallen on hard times and was genuinely in rented accommodation prior to this. However, it certainly would not be if every young person decided to seek rented accommodation and have it paid for by the State. That is why we are including conditions for the payment of rent supplement in regulations and legislation.