JOINT COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL AND FAMILY AFFAIRS debate -
Wednesday, 3 Dec 2003

Vol. 1 No. 17

Rent Supplement Scheme: Presentation.

Chairman

I am pleased to welcome Mr. Patrick Burke, director of Threshold; Ms Noeleen Hartigan, Simon Community Ireland and Ms Frances Byrne, director of One Parent Exchange and Network. I should mention that the three people present today represent 13 different groups, the names of which I shall now read into the public record: Threshold, the Simon Community of Ireland, Focus Ireland, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, the Irish Refugee Council, the National Youth Council of Ireland, the Irish National Organisation for the Unemployed, Age Action, the Children's Rights Alliance, Women's Aid, One Parent Exchange and Network and Cherish, the National Association for Single Parents.

Members are reminded of the parliamentary practice that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against any person outside the Houses and must not refer to an official either by name or in a such a way as to make him or her identifiable. Members who wish to make a declaration on any matter being discussed may do so now or at the beginning of their contribution. They are also reminded that if the possibility of a conflict of interest arises they should make a declaration now or at the commencement of their contribution.

I draw witnesses' attention to the fact that members of the committee have absolute privilege but the same privilege does not apply to witnesses. While it is generally accepted that a witness would have qualified privilege, the committee is not in a position to guarantee any level of privilege to witnesses appearing before it. I ask that the presentations be concise as members are very busy today. Members will also be concise in their questioning.

Mr. Patrick Burke

I thank the committee for affording us the opportunity to address our concerns on the recent announcement in regard to the rent supplement. Ms Frances Byrne, OPEN, One Parent Exchange and Network, Ms Noeleen Hartigan from the Simon Community of Ireland and I represent 13 organisations which are opposed to this move and have signed up to the position paper which is before the committee this morning.

I am director of Threshold, the national housing organisation. I am also chairperson of European Anti-Poverty Network Ireland. Threshold's aim is to secure a right to housing, particularly for people and households experiencing poverty and social exclusion.

The Minister for Social and Family Affairs is correct in saying that Ireland needs a coherent social housing policy. Approximately one third of social housing beneficiaries are currently in receipt of rent supplement and the rest are in social housing tenancies. Developing an integrated housing policy to meet housing need means the Departments responsible for social welfare, housing, health and finance must work together. The Minister's announcement of 13 November restricting rent supplement eligibility is premature because the Departments have yet to deliver. We must remember that rent supplement is the measure of last resort in the existing housing system; it is the bottom safety net to prevent severe housing deprivation. Without it, there is no other show in town for those that find themselves in severe housing need.

No alternative to rent supplement is in place. Social housing is not available. As members will be aware, the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government has reported that 48,143 households are in need of social housing and currently await allocation. The introduction of the six months renting test for rent supplement applicants will, we believe, see most vulnerable people remaining in hardship or force them into homelessness. It is of no comfort to hear the Minister promise to make exceptions for homeless people or people with special circumstances. We should never push people to the desperate state of homelessness before offering assistance.

Community welfare officers and superintendents already have discretion and are best placed to assess whether individual circumstances involve housing need. The six months intervention creates uncertainty, as different community welfare officers will interpret the rules differently. One's treatment will depend on where one lives and the community welfare officer one deals with. Insisting that all applicants obtain a needs assessment by local authorities, as the Minister proposes, is currently impractical as the authorities cannot cope. We are aware that some local authorities have waiting lists of up to three months for assessment. The prospect of allocation of a social housing unit is minimal.

Living on rent supplement gives the basic level of accommodation to which anyone in need should be entitled. Threshold would be among the first to agree that the rent supplement system is flawed. The system involves work disincentives, undesirable regional differentiation and access problems. Nonetheless, it must remain in place until an overall integrated housing policy is put in place. We ask the committee to press the four Ministers involved to develop an integrated social housing programme and to reverse the restrictions on rent supplement until the integratedpolicy is in place.

Ms Frances Byrne

While in some sense it is an honour to meet again with the committee, it is sad that OPEN has had to come back and talk about this issue. OPEN is the national network of lone parent groups. It is one of the 13 groups which have been forced to come together to campaign against the cuts, particularly those that affect accommodation.

There is a combination of factors that mean lone parents experience housing and accommodation problems. There is a housing crisis. One parent families, compared to other families, rely on social welfare. By their nature, one parent families are smaller families and because of the way housing need is measured they will continue to fall down the local authority housing list. Based on figures from the Department, despite making up only 11% of families, approximately 43% of those on housing lists are lone parent headed households. In some areas, including Dublin City Council, this rises to 60%. In fact, in this council area, 30% of the list comprises one parent and one child families and they have no hope of being housed in the foreseeable future.

There are almost 1,000 children living in bed and breakfast accommodation in the ERHA area. In most of these residences, families must leave during the day. The accommodation, usually one room, barely passes what most Irish people would see as an acceptable standard. Children are therefore restricted in their development. One of the saddest things I have seen in my ten years involved in such work was a Tallaght-based family with a three year old girl that required a social worker to bring the child to Temple Street Hospital to be treated by a play therapist in order that someone could teach her to play. She had never had enough space to play and because she had to constantly walk the streets and was not able to avail of pre-school child care, she simply did not know how to play.

OPEN knows that some lone parents and their children continue to stay even in the most difficult and overcrowded circumstances. Sometimes it can be a positive experience for lone parents to remain with their families. This is particularly true when children are small or someone has just become a lone parent either through a crisis pregnancy or because their relationship or marriage has broken down. Even in the best of circumstances, it puts inordinate pressure on older people, many of whom have retired or are about to retire and find themselves having to house another family in an already overstretched home. If there is already poverty in this home, unbearable pressures and tensions arise.

In 2002, slightly fewer than 11,000 recipients of rent supplement were also in receipt of the main one parent family payment. Given the continuing housing crisis, it is likely this will increase. Let us not be overdramatic about this - there has only been a 10% increase in the number of one parent families seeking rent supplement. If this measure is introduced, the Government will be responsible for forcing homelessness on more than 1,000 lone parent families. It will also affect two parent families.

It has been difficult for us to acquire information on how this will be rolled out. From our experience, there is not a community welfare officer in the country who will give somebody support when they have been able to survive for six months without the supplementary allowance support. This is not the way the system works. In any event, 62% of lone parents in receipt of social welfare have one child. Including child benefit and their payment, they receive €750.53 from the Department. In Dublin, rent for a one bedroom apartment starts at between €800 and €1,000. Despite being in receipt of an income of €750, those that will have to wait for six months are being asked to find €6,000.

As Mr. Burke has said, the Minister is correct in saying that her Department is now providing mainstream housing support. While he may rightly feel aggrieved about this, the answer is not to increase pressure points on already disadvantaged families. The answer is not to force children into unsuitable accommodation. The answer lies somewhere in recognising the monster that is the housing crisis and the ensuing frailty of vulnerable families. We must come up with a Government-wide response based on reality and fairness.

I thank the committee for meeting us. I hope it will bring to bear what pressure it can to try to reverse this.

Ms Noeleen Hartigan

Members might ask why the Simon Community is attending this meeting. Members will have seen the Minister's press release and noted that it says rent supplements will be made available to those who have been renting for six months or those who are homeless. The reason the Simon Community, other groups and individuals, including Focus Ireland, Fr. Peter McVerry and Women's Aid, have addressed this committee is because this measure will force people into homelessness. It is quite shocking that a Minister would issue a document that states that unless one is in the dire circumstance that is homelessness, one will not receive support.

Many members of the committee have spoken about the homelessness crisis in the House and we thank them for their support over the years. However, since the Housing Act 1988, which provided that local authorities can and should house the homeless, homelessness has increased by 274%. Moreover, there has been a change in the profile of those who become homeless. Homelessness no longer affects only the stereotypical elderly male home from working on the building sites in the United Kingdom. It also affects women with children, young people, men of all ages and, most worryingly, families with young children who are homeless because of the housing crisis.

The Government's response to homelessness has been positive in the past three years. The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government alone spent €50 million combating homelessness last year and produced two national strategies, homelessness - an integrated strategy and the homeless preventative strategy. However, the measure by the Department of Social and Family Affairs flies in the face of these efforts. While it states those in the dire circumstance of homelessness will receive rent supplement, it does not say anything about those at risk of homelessness. We cannot say we are tackling the problem unless we are preventing it.

In pure, simple economic terms - I have to bite my tongue as a Simon Community representative when talking of people as economic units rather than individuals with human rights - it makes no sense to deny rent supplement to someone and force him or her into homelessness. Furthermore, it makes no sense to force people into that spiral in which they are no longer an economic unit and incapable of participating in the labour market. Ultimately, the State ends up spending more supporting such people over the years through rehabilitative and housing measures than it otherwise would do. We should catch people before they fall and give them a chance to participate properly in society. Unfortunately, the Government's measure makes no sense from a human rights or economic perspective.

Where did the idea come from? Other speakers have said how glad they are to be present. I hope the committee will engage even more with this debate because there is no policy basis for the six month rule. There are no statistics or evidence to back it up other than the Minister's statement. This is not how we should make policy. It is very worrying for all of us who put very scarce resources into policy and it is worrying for legislators that an idea such as this should be on the table without any evidence to support it.

There are currently three committees examining the rent supplement system. Like them, we believe it should be reformed. However, the idea of the six month rule has not come from either the local authority committee, the interdepartmental committee on rent supplement or the special advisory group to the Minister, which was set up to advise her on the matter. The measure will, at the very least, cause extreme hardship and may well increase homelessness. This is not a legacy any Government, from either side of the House, would want to stand over. I appeal to the members of the committee, who will be first to see the effects this measure will have on their constituents who will be unable to obtain local authority housing or rent supplement, to ask the Minister to have a moratorium on this decision until we have an integrated approach and until we can be absolutely guaranteed that it will not cause homelessness.

Deputy Ring

I welcome the delegates and am delighted they are present. The Chairman has asked us not to make political speeches this morning because we have already made such speeches and highlighted exactly what the delegates have stated. They have outlined the position very well. As politicians, we may have outlined the position without the same clarity as the delegation. Perhaps people will listen when non-politicians speak on this subject.

I am delighted the delegates have outlined the position just like many members of the committee. The Chairman and I tabled priority questions on the matter yesterday. Ms Hartigan is correct in her view that the decision on rent supplement is not a policy decision. It looks as if it is targeting the poor and weak. Do the delegates know of any abuse of the rent supplement system? If they had an opportunity to reform it tomorrow morning, how would they do so? The Minister and others keep saying there is abuse of the system. I asked yesterday if anybody had ever been prosecuted and discovered there was no abuse evident in the Department. The measure is a cost-cutting exercise.

Deputy S. Ryan

Like my colleague, I compliment the delegates on their submission. I hope I am not misreading the Minister in saying she believes the introduction of this scheme would not make one person homeless. What are the delegates' comments on that statement?

We know the extent of local authority housing lists throughout the country. Why would a couple or lone parent with a child or children feel it necessary to seek a rent supplement from their community welfare officer? Will the delegates outline examples with which they are familiar of cases in which families are forced to seek private rented accommodation?

Deputy Callanan

We have been told that when one gets a rise in one's social welfare payments, one's rent payment on a local authority house also increases. Some would rather stay in receipt of the rent supplement than take a council house. What are the delegates' views on this? The cap on the rent last year was supposed to be terrible but it worked and decreased rent payments. Will the delegates comment on this?

If one lives in the home of one's well-off family, although one may not have anything oneself, one does not receive certain social welfare benefits. Is there a tendency for such people to leave home to allow them claim their rightful entitlements in terms of social welfare, such as the rent supplement?

Deputy Boyle

Neither the local government group, the interdepartmental group nor the Minister's group reacted to the non-governmental report that is already in the public domain, namely, that by Threshold and Comhairle on rent supplement and its possible replacement by housing benefit. To what extent has there been a formal reaction to a real reform of the system involving a direct payment instead of the bits-and-bobs approach that currently obtains? Frances Byrne referred to the fact that 30% to 40% of those on housing lists head single parent families. My experience is that a further one third are single person households, mostly men, who would be similarly affected by these decisions. That is my reaction.

Mr. Burke

To address Deputy Ring's question on abuse, there is no way any of the organisations we represent would condone abuse of the system. I am sure there is a degree of abuse, as there is with any of the welfare payments. The Minister has mentioned that and her officials have a duty to investigate that and ensure it does not occur. It is also the case with the rent supplement scheme as it exists. It is important to remember that if there is abuse it should be sought out but not everyone should be punished for the sins of the few. We all remember being in school when everyone was punished by the teacher because one person was naughty. This is a similar situation and we should make that distinction. If there is abuse it should be addressed administratively but it should not dictate an entire change of policy.

Reform of the system is a more complex and difficult issue. We agree with the Minister's statement that hers is not a housing authority and that that is not her primary function. The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government needs to address this. However, in spite of committees meetings since 1996, we have had no coherent conclusions. We are not in a position to know why, as we are not party to the discussions. However, we would like to be, as it would be helpful to all concerned if organisations like ours, which are at the coalface in dealing with people who are having housing challenges on a daily basis, were engaged in that process. I do not know what the impasse is and it is hard to understand why this is not clear after so many years. Perhaps the Minister feels this is a way to put it up to the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and make it take the matter on board, but our worry is that the innocent victims in that turf war will be those experiencing poverty and social exclusion. That should not be the case in any just, democratic society.

Ms Byrne

The questions were interesting and behind them are bigger questions about how the accommodation crisis is being handled. I support everything Mr. Burke said about abuses but where is the evidence for those abuses? I have never heard anybody speak on the record about abuses of rent supplement - civil servants, backbenchers or front benchers. From working with a local lone parents' group I know other things were going on in communities before the Celtic tiger, with people telling lies for discretionary payments. However, rent supplement is so hard to get and there are so many means tests that I do not see how one could abuse it, as that would be very difficult. I have heard no evidence for that. Not only are we condemning that abuse but we want to hear about it, as we are not clear about what that means.

Deputy S. Ryan

There is abuse. We do not know to what degree, but there is abuse.

Ms Byrne

I am not saying there is not, but nobody has told me what happens in the system. The community welfare officers have not told me. There have been abuses in communities of certain aspects of the supplementary welfare allowance but not the rent supplement, though I accept there may well be. It would be important to talk about that. If that is where the Minister is coming from then we should have that discussion, but it is not clear to me that that is where she is coming from. That is what we desperately want to know.

To address Deputy Ryan's questions, we have traditionally built two and three bedroom local authority houses. Apart from one or two notable pilot schemes, local authorities have traditionally used the size of a household to assess housing need. As Deputy Boyle said, certain groups, such as single people, with or without children, keep falling to the bottom of the list. That is why one sees the numbers on rent supplement growing, which one would not expect. Logically one might think that those with larger families and older people would be involved but we have seen smaller families and people without children moving up the list. That is an unfortunate political reality members will know better than us but what is being talked about is not going to address that problem. We need a different housing build and sustainable communities, which members will know.

Deputy Callanan asked about people deliberately moving out of their family homes to avail of social welfare benefits. From a lone parent's perspective, one would get the main social welfare payment if one were a millionaire's son or daughter in that it is means tested based on one's means. I refer to the one parent family payment. If one moves out of the family home the only benefit one will get as a result is rent supplement. As it is difficult for Ms Hartigan to talk about things making an economic argument, it is difficult for a lone parent with children, as it is for any parent, on a combination of rent and child supplement to persuade a landlord to take them in. There are considerable barriers to overcome and only the very desperate will seek rent supplement. It is only those under the pressure of poverty, family tensions or an inch away from homelessness who will seek it if they have children, and that is the reality. One tells one's story to the community welfare officer, who then makes a decision. People are turned down all the time because those officers have enormous discretion.

The only benefit is rent supplement but there are barriers to overcome to get it and when one gets it there are other barriers to overcome to persuade a private landlord to take one on, as one has a very unwelcome combination of children and rent allowance. It is very difficult and often those families get very poor housing.

Ms Hartigan

First, community welfare officers have a great deal of discretion. They know the communities they work with and some have an intimate knowledge of their clients, particularly in rural areas. They have power and they do not like to be seen as having the wool pulled over their eyes. They do not like to hand over money if there is a suspicion of abuse of the system. The six month rule is unnecessary as they already have a lot of discretion and it is an insult to their role, if that is not a breach of Dáil privilege.

Second, when the rent cap issue is raised in the Dáil the Taoiseach responds to that and the six month rule as one issue. The Minister said no one has been made homeless as a result and no homeless person, as a result of being denied the rent supplement or rent cap, losing their flat or being encouraged to move somewhere cheaper by the community welfare officer, which is the direction given to CWOs, has told their story to her. However, they have told their stories to us. We know people are signing deals with landlords stating rents are not above €107, for example. Tenants and landlords collude and tenants then try to find the money elsewhere. We in Simon know people who are making up the shortfall by begging in the streets, while others are borrowing the money from family, loan sharks and credit unions. Some people dip into their grocery money. They must do whatever they can because they know if they lose their homes it is a slippery slope to all sorts of other problems. People will do anything to hold on to their home.

With respect to the Deputy, the cap on the amount of rent allowance available was meant to reduce rents overall. We have not seen independent evidence of that as yet, neither from our side nor from the Government's side, and we need evidence to prove it because we cannot keep making policy decisions without it. What we do have is the evidence of people either being met by our soup runners or our outreach workers or of people telephoning services like Threshold and saying that they are trying to make up €30, €40 or €50 a week on top of their rent cap because they cannot afford to lose their home. It was a measure that put the onus and the penalty on the poor rather than putting some sort of cap on the landlord class, who are already well privileged and protected by the right to property in the Constitution.

In terms of people leaving the family home, one group which is not represented here - we do have some support from Congress on this matter - is young workers or workers of any age. One must think about the rule from the perspective of someone who is working, who is earning a decent enough living to be able to afford a flat and who loses his or her job after renting for four and a half months. Under this measure such a person will also lose his or her home. It is as simple as that. Nobody has the sort of savings in reserve to pay the sort of rents charged in Dublin, for example. While they are not an at risk poverty group represented by us, workers who have been renting for less than six months will lose their homes if they lose their jobs under this measure. They are not at risk of homelessness or homeless and therefore there is "catch all" provision for them.

Deputy Callanan

Are such people being paid the rent supplement even though they are working?

Ms Hartigan

No. If somebody has been renting for four and a half months and has become unemployed, he or she might be able to meet their first month's rent. As such a person has only been renting for four and a half months, however, under this new guidance he or she will not be entitled to rent supplement. We are putting a whole class of workers, particularly of young workers, at risk.

The final point I wish to make has to do with the changing demographic profile. A substantial number of people on local authority waiting lists are single and many of them are men. Although it has improved, there is much discrimination against men on the basis of their family status. There is equal status legislation which states that we cannot discriminate against people because of their family size or status, but we do. Single men, whether their children are with their ex-partner or whether they have no children, are discriminated against in housing provision.

What we are seeing at present, in particular, are men who have left the family home without acrimony. Literally there has been family breakdown. They cannot afford to rent a place with a second bedroom. There is no way the local authority will give them anywhere, particularly not a place with a second bedroom, and those men are not having access to their children. Simple matters, where our mindset is that a single man can look after himself and should not be on the local authority list and certainly should not be getting rent supplement, are contributing to outcomes like family breakdown and denying men access to their children.

That is not painting too stark a picture of it. Housing is at the very centre of social and economic policy, or at least should be. It is about the most basic issues like the right to vote, the right to have access to your children and the right to work because if one does not have an address, one will not get a job. A measure like this which is literally plucked out of the air will have a knock-on effect on all of those issues.

We do need reform. The rent supplement bill at present is €330 million compared to €60 million only a few short years ago. That is not good, but it is part of an overall housing crisis where we have seen the amount of local authority housing falling, house prices increase by 130% over ten years and, as Mr. Burke pointed out, group after group reporting on rent supplement and nothing being done. The Government should not penalise the poor with this measure and I ask the committee to use whatever power and discretion it has to urge the Minister to at least, as we stated earlier, put a moratorium on this decision until a Deputy, not only of a constituency but of this committee, can be guaranteed that this will not cause homelessness and hardship.

Deputy Ring

I am concerned about local authorities assessing people. In the case of a single person or even a lone parent with one child, as Ms Hartigan pointed out, local authorities can introduce criteria under which they will not house a person unless he or she has two children or is in a family unit. As has been said, they are units and I hate to see people so described but that is the way they are now described. In such cases the local authorities will say that they are not really in need of housing or they do not fall under the local authority's criteria, and then the social welfare officer will say that the county council has not assessed the person and he or she cannot give the person rent supplement. I am very worried about that.

Ms Hartigan

Unfortunately, all of that is based on fact. As I pointed out earlier, we have enabling legislation on homelessness for 15 years, yet we have seen a 274% increase in the number of homeless. There is clear evidence from the local authorities that they simply do not have the capacity to do any more, even at an administrative level, than they are currently doing, not alone about housing legislation but even about seeing more people.

I refer Deputies to the definition of "homelessness" in our briefing note. We do have quite a good definition in Ireland. It includes, for example, people fleeing domestic violence in the home, which is very progressive, yet we know that it is up to an individual in a local authority to say, "but really are they?" Unfortunately if we have the present spiralling local authority waiting list and the present increases in categories like single people or small families, we know that the gap between who the local authority should house and who they do house is growing. In this country housing provision is arbitrary and unfortunately is often based on who one knows or to whom one can get access.

To echo the Deputy's point, the local authorities do not have the capacity to do what the Minister is asking them to do in this regard and our understanding is that there has been very little consultation between the Department or the Minister, Deputy Coughlan, and the local authority officials or even the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government on this measure.

Chairman

We have had a valuable exchange of views. I thank the delegation for the presentation to the committee and for answering the questions raised. We found it useful and comprehensive. I also thank the members of the committee for their concise and precise questioning. It is obviously a matter on which we will be keeping a close eye over the next number of months to see how it develops. We certainly will convey the views of the delegation to the Minister. I am sure she is aware of them from having received the delegation's presentations, but we, as a committee, will convey them to her also. We were a little constrained by time and I thank the delegation for making a concise presentation. We look forward to interacting with the delegation at various times in the new year.

Deputy Ring

I propose that in six months we invite these six people in to review the position and give us their experience of what is happening on the ground.

Chairman

That is a fair proposal, that we should meet again next June or thereabouts.

Mr. Burke

I thank the Deputy and you, Chairman. We would be happy with that. We also want to thank the committee for affording us the opportunity to address it today. I am sure it is clear from our presentation that we are deeply concerned about the effects this will have on the people we work with every day. We thank the committee for taking on board our input and for its support in this matter.

The joint committee adjourned at 10.50 a.m.,sine die.