Michael McCarthy (Labour)

I move amendment No. 6:

In page 6, before section 3, but in Part 2, to insert the following new section:

3.—Section 198 of the Principal Act is amended by the insertion of the following subsection after subsection (3D):

"(3E) The payment of a supplement towards the amount of rent payable by a person in respect of his or her residence will be paid to this person on the day it is due according to the tenancy agreement of this person with their landlord.".

These amendments concern rent supplement. I need not tell the Minister how much rent supplement is costing the State. The historical experience of rent supplement is that it is paid for houses, flats and apartments built on foot of generous tax breaks, which contributed to the fuelling of the construction bubble in this country for a significant period. One of the real casualties of that is that few social houses were built. At the moment we have too many houses and some people in NAMA are considering knocking houses, which is an appalling vista. We had a very good system when the State was building local authority houses and giving grants to voluntary organisations such as the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and organisations dealing with care of the elderly. They built specific houses for the people they cared for and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government was involved in this and was happy to see that diversity in the provision of social housing. We also had good affordable housing schemes when that was an issue. The criticism at the time was that there were not enough houses.

This amendment seeks to address a number of key issues. I ask the Minister to give an indication of how much rent supplement costs the State. On the balance of costs, the figures from a number of years ago ran into millions of euro. The enactment of the legislation establishing the Private Residential Tenancies Board gave us an insight into who owns rental property and who engages in that activity. What does rent supplement cost and what will it cost in terms of building social houses and stopping this scheme? What thinking has prevailed in terms of how the Department seeks to raise money and provide better bang for its buck?