Paul Bradford (Fine Gael)

As is often the case on Committee Stage, this series of amendments allows us to wander a little beyond the Bill itself. Interesting questions have been posed by Senator McCarthy and may be more pertinent to the Minister and the Minister of State with responsibility for housing at the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. The questions are nevertheless worth asking. Rent supplement has multiplied one thousandfold over the past 20 years and is an interesting political concept. Senator McCarthy referred to the tens and hundreds of millions of euro expended on rent supplement. The Department of Social Protection and the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government need to sit down to examine how these moneys can be best expended.

One of the problems is our obsession with house ownership. In the past day or two I read a magazine that Members receive from the German Embassy, which gives facts and figures on life in Germany. The relatively low rate of home ownership compared to renting in Germany struck me. This is normal across Europe but we have a different way of doing business in Ireland. Rent supplement has been part of the equation in allowing people to find proper accommodation. It has a role. These amendments, which will not be accepted, are about tidying up matters and having certainty and propriety. I am interested in the broad comments of the Minister on rent supplement and rental allowance. It is a necessity at a time when we do not have substantial numbers of vacant local authority housing units. The Minister of State with responsibility for housing must work on this. Most constituents find it hard to accept people are on waiting lists for social housing when there are so many vacant houses in the private sector and at local authority level. The methodology for allocating housing can be slow and local authority houses in virtually every local authority area are vacant for six to 12 months without being allocated. This is a problem. There is the financial consideration of repairing houses and the regulations that mean the house must be in pristine condition before it can be allocated. Housing is a very interesting-----