Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I stress that the Department of Social Protection has no expertise in housing. Housing is the function of local authorities and the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. There is fairly widespread agreement among all the political parties and Independents that we would have a better system if it was dealt with by the local authorities. That is the objective.

One issue was raised by Senator Fidelma Healy Eames and Senator Marie Moloney. There are a couple of different issues. One issue is that the rent should be paid to the landlord directly. From a social welfare point of view that is difficult to do because the relationship of social welfare is to the individual who has a social welfare entitlement.

The suggestion of a new computer system is very welcome given that we are dealing with around 50 to 60 different systems with different levels of entitlements and one cannot look through them. We cannot make exact comparisons between people. In some situations some people have a greater advantage from the system than others. All I can say is that if someone is living on a sole income of €188 a week as a single person, that is not a huge allowance in terms of the cost of living here. However, we also have examples of families who can accumulate multiple payments and as Senator Quinn pointed out, these families may also be in receipt of substantial child benefit payments.

It is critical that we address the issue of rent supplement. We also need to know whether other Departments or agencies pay income supports to families. We do not necessarily get information from the HSE as to whether it makes payments to families. I suspect that some of the large amounts one sees reported in the newspapers from time to time are based on cases where, for instance, people within one family may be both claimants and carers. There might also be some children being fostered in the family and payments being made by the HSE. We do not always get that information. We do not have a system like the Austrian one, which is a single account, which can keep us informed of all the different payments payable by different elements of the state. In Ireland, payments would most likely come from the Department of Social Protection and some arm of the HSE. We do not have a system that can keep us informed of payments from different Departments currently and would only be able to get that information by carrying out an investigation. While our data protection laws do not necessarily allow Departments to share that information, it might be appropriate to provide for making it possible to share the information.

The transfer of responsibility for rent allowance payments to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government is very important. The big problem county managers have experienced is that when social welfare recipients go on the rental allowance scheme, the rate of default is quite high. Where people move from rent supplement to the local authority rental accommodation scheme, RAS, there is no problem if they get a traditional local authority house because they are on a direct differential rent. However, the difficulty for the local authorities is that in some cases people on a social welfare income do not get a traditional local authority house and they are falling behind in their rent payments. In some cases, people enter the household budgeting system operated by An Post and then back out of it. They commit to it when they get their tenancy, but back out of it.

We may need to look at legislation which will make a legally enforceable commitment to the household budgeting scheme when somebody takes up accommodation. The local authorities want the Department to deduct rent directly, but our famous computer system would not be able to do that because there are 88 different local authority differential rent schemes. There are also at least 88 different computer systems. It is not feasible to try to get the Department of Social Protection to undertake pretty much all of the public administration in this regard. The Department already handles a vast number of schemes which is part of the difficulty because the pressure on all the schemes is extensive. For that reason, the transfer of responsibility for rent allowance payment to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government is the right move, but we should provide greater legal status and enforceability to An Post's household budgeting system. This would be very helpful. Members are aware of how appalling it is for families who get into and build up thousands in arrears and that this brings an enormous complications to families and they become even poorer. It is also a big problem for local authorities.

Senators referred to large families on social welfare. During the Celtic tiger era here payments rose rapidly, but one difference between Ireland and other countries is that most countries with good systems have a mix of income supports and cash payments and services. For instance, I am looking into the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance and considering whether some of it could be paid directly to the schools for a national schoolbook lending system.