Peadar Clohessy
Ceist:3 Mr. Clohessy asked the Minister for Social Welfare if local authority tenants are currently entitled to claim rent allowance under the provisions of the supplementary welfare allowance scheme. [13974/95]
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Social Welfare Benefits.
The supplementary welfare allowance scheme was introduced in July 1977 and is now incorporated in sections 170 to 191 and 266 to 269 of the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act, 1993.
Section 179 of the Act provides that where a person's weekly income by way of supplementary welfare allowance or from any other source is not sufficient to meet their needs, they may be granted an increase in their allowance or be paid an allowance to supplement their other income. This section enables the Minister to make regulations prescribing the circumstances under which payments may be made and this was done in article 6 of the Social Welfare (Supplementary Welfare Allowance) Regulations, 1977 as amended.
Local authority tenants pay a differential rent which is income-related, in respect of their accommodation. Responsibility for making and amending differential rent schemes was passed to local authorities in August 1986. Guidelines issued by the Minister for the Environment at the time require local authorities to ensure that rent schemes adopted by them are based on certain broad principles. One of these is that the rent payable should be related to income and a smaller proportion of income should be required from low income households. A further requirement is that provision should be included for the acceptance of a lower rent than that required under the terms of the scheme in exceptional cases where payment of the normal rent would give rise to hardship.
While local authority tenants are not precluded from applying for rent supplement under the current provisions of the supplementary welfare allowance scheme, it has been the policy of my Department not to pay rent supplements to tenants of local authority accommodation. It is considered that the need for such supplementation should not arise because of the nature of the differential rent schemes, that is, the ability of the local authorities to relate rents to household income and the option to invoke the hardship clause where appropriate.
Furthermore, the payment of supplements in such cases would result in an inefficient use of resources with two Departments of State individually addressing the same problem.
I want to outline to the Minister what is happening in my constituency in respect of supplementary welfare payments. One of my constituents pays £20 per week rent for a local authority house and another, who earns a similar income and has the same number of children, lives in accommodation rented from a landlord. The person living in the private rented accommodation receives a supplementary welfare allowance whereas the local authority tenant does not. Surely that is discrimination. Health board officers find it difficult to refuse supplementary welfare allowance to local authority tenants. Will the Minister examine the question of paying such tenants a supplementary welfare allowance?
I accept that the case outlined by the Deputy appears to discriminated against local authority tenants. As I stated in my reply, it would be more acceptable for local authorities to deal with this issue because they already provide subsidised accommodation through the differential rent scheme. It would be a waste of departmental resources for the Departments of Social Welfare and the Environment to implement rent assistance schemes when the local authorities could invoke the hardship clause to assist people in such circumstances or take into account the supplementary welfare allowance rates when implementing their differential rents schemes.
The purpose of differential rent schemes is to ensure that the rents applicable to local authority tenants are related to their income. If differential rents do not take into account the supplementary welfare allowance rates, the rents are deficient. This matter should be raised with the local authorities who have the power to vary their rent schemes. It would be pointless to introduce a new scheme for low income families and local authority housing when one already exists.
The Minister is well aware that local authorities can go only a certain distance in regard to hardship cases, whereas welfare officers are generally aware of the cause of the hardship and, therefore, should be in a position to assist the tenant in some way.
I accept that community welfare officers are in a better position to examine the circumstances of individual cases, but the fact that they do not provide rent allowance does not preclude them from providing assistance in respect of other urgent or special needs. It is merely a matter of policy that they do not provide a subsidy for rent when the rent is already being subsidised by the local authority. We should examine why local authorities are not addressing the question of having their rent structures related to the calculations community welfare officers make in respect of private rented accommodation. That would be a much more effective and efficient way of dealing with the problem of local authority tenants.
City and county managers who recently examined this issue concluded that they would not take a step in the direction I suggest because they consider that, even though they are on low incomes, the security of tenure and the option to purchase validates the higher rents local authority tenants must pay. I do not accept that argument.
The programme for Government includes a commitment to bring housing subsidies and assistance under one roof by allocating them to the Department of the Environment and local authorities and that matter is being addressed. It would be a mistake for the Department of Social Welfare to accept responsibility for house subsidisation when we are examining the possibility of the supplementary welfare allowance scheme shedding the subsidisation of private rented dwellings.
We must find a way of assisting people to secure accommodation other than through the supplementary welfare allowance scheme which was never intended for that purpose. It was merely intended as a special once-off safety net and not a support for families or individuals on a long term ongoing basis, as is the case with private rented accommodation at present.
The time available for priority questions is exhausted. I can, however, deal with Question No. 4 in accordance with our revised Standing Orders.