State-provided rent supplements will return to being a short-term income support rather than a major social housing assistance programme through the local authorities, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has told the Dáil.
"Local authorities now have a specific responsibility to meet the long-term housing needs" of people requiring assistance, "on the basis of a phased implementation. When fully implemented, the arrangements will allow rent supplement to return to its original objective of short-term income support," Mr Ahern said.
He was speaking in the wake of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General which found that rent supplement had risen from €151 million in 2000 to €369 million last year. Some €2 billion would be spent this year on social and affordable housing and between 6,000 and 7,000 houses would be started or acquired this year, Mr Ahern said.
He added that the increase from 42,700 to 60,000 in the number of people claiming rent supplement and the rise in the supplement itself were the main reasons for the overall cost increase. He said that single parents made up a large element in that but were not the only part of that.
Labour leader Pat Rabbitte said the rise was due to the rate of increase in house prices and the low output of social housing.
"The output of public authority houses is now lower than in the mid-1970s," he said. "This is a pot of gold for the landlords. In very many cases, it provides a bounty worth tens of millions to those already the beneficiaries of tax breaks to build the apartments that they now rent out."
He also claimed that people on rent supplement could not enter the workforce or they would lose the benefit and "this is surely the biggest poverty limbo created by this scheme".
The Taoiseach said, however, that "substantial measures have been taken to remove possible disincentives. We have introduced an improvement disregard of almost €200 and the tapered withdrawal of benefits as earnings increase."
