Aideen Hayden (Labour)

I thank the Minister for a comprehensive statement. I also thank the Sinn Féin Senators for raising this important issue. We must bear in mind that 20% of the people live in rented accommodation. That is a significant change for a country that until recently had an 80% home ownership rate.

Rent supplement was introduced in 1989 as a short-term measure but that position had changed within two years of its introduction. There have been numerous attempts to transfer rent supplement costs from the Department of Social Protection to the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, one in 1993 and another in 1996, but every attempt to date has been unsuccessful. The commitment given by the Minister for Social Protection and successive Ministers of State with responsibility for housing, Deputy Willie Penrose and Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, to transfer the payment to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government represents, in all honesty, the only real hope for rectifying the difficulties in the area of rent supplement.

There are a couple of aspects of the amendment with which I am not entirely comfortable, including where it acknowledges that the Department of Social Protection would not receive better value if it negotiated rental agreements with landlords directly and that tenants negotiating individually brings about greater efficiency. For example, it is clear from the Department of Social Protection's statistics that in 2010, some 20 landlords received more than €100,000 and up to €300,000 annually from the Department. It would be far more efficient for the Department of Social Protection to have negotiated with those landlords directly. To get best value for money for the State, I strongly suggest it is not a good idea to put vulnerable tenants in the front line to achieve savings. These are tenants who have health issues, mental health issues and language and literacy problems. Better savings could be achieved by negotiating and dealing directly with landlords. In that context, the transfer of the payment to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and into the hands of the local authorities, ultimately, represents the only solution to the problem.

In regard to the Government amendment, the reality is that anybody dealing with rent supplement on the ground knows there are difficulties in its administration. I fear that whatever information the Department of Social Protection received when setting rent supplement limits did not take into account the specific difficulties of people who occupy the bedsit end of the market. The rent indices that would have been available to the Department under the Private Residential Tenancies Board and Daft systems do not cover, to any great extent, bedsit accommodation and yet 60% of rent supplement recipients are single people. Therefore, the system is flawed in giving an accurate account of the costs in the market.

I do not question the Department's bona fides but I draw the Minister's attention to a top up survey recently conducted by Threshold. It was a random sample of 100 rent supplement clients between February and May 2012. Some 55%, or 55 people, were paying more than the rent limit. Of those 55 who were topping up out of their social welfare payments, 67% said the amount of rent they paid affected their spending on their shopping bill and a further 64% said it impacted on their capacity to pay their heating bills. In Dublin and Cork it is not uncommon to encounter clients who pay a top up in the region of €100 per month. That has a real affect on the ability of individuals to meet their daily living expenses.

I have discussed with the Minister situations where it has not been possible within the rent caps to provide properly for people. I know she is open to this. It is important that the Department understands that for those who are living on rent supplement it is their home and it should not arbitrarily say to somebody that he or she needs to move because his or her landlord will not take a successive rent reduction. Landlords have taken rent reductions and many have taken successive rent reductions. On this occasion, more and more landlords are reluctant to take a rent reduction, for which there are a number of reasons. The market is increasing in terms of the numbers who are renting. We have a moribund housing market; we are not building. The reality is that rent supplement tenants are competing with ordinary people who, in previous times, would have seen their future in the home ownership market. As a country we do not want to see the most vulnerable pushed into the worst quality accommodation.

I respect the Minister's commitment that nobody will be made homeless by the changes made to the rent supplement scheme. However, I wish to bring one case study to the attention of the House. It relates to a homeless person who has been liaising with the access housing unit in Dublin and is seeking housing. He has been coming to the access housing unit for a number of years. He is a heroin addict and has been receiving treatment. Fortunately, he is drug free and trying to get back to live independently. The access housing unit began seeking accommodation for him in March 2012. It accompanied him on several viewings but has been unable to source good quality accommodation within the €475 rent cap. In one studio, the individual was unable to stand up straight in the kitchen area. Another studio in the city centre was so small that the single bed took up 50% of the floor space. He also viewed studios that were damp, had sofa beds rather than actual beds as well as studios that did not meet the minimum standards and in one case did not contain cooking facilities. To date we have not been able to find him accommodation within the rent cap. I accept the Minister has given a commitment that homeless people will be given appropriate access, under the rent supplement scheme, and it is Government policy, under the housing first scheme, that housing is put first and that we do not end up, by default, with more people in homeless accommodation at a greater cost to the State.

I bring to the attention of both Ministers that there are difficulties with the rent supplement system, and there is little point in us burying our heads in the sand about it. In advance of any review of that system I ask both Ministers to do two things. First, we must expedite the transfer of rent supplement to the local authorities because the sooner we do that, the better chance we have of getting out of this position. Second, I ask the Ministers to give priority to the real difficulties single people in particular are experiencing in the system as well as the difficulties the caps are imposing in terms of getting people out of homeless services into houses.