Cuts to rent allowance - paid to the poorest tenants in the private-rented sector - and changes to way it is paid, have been an “unmitigated disaster” and “need to be reversed”, according to a senior Government TD.
Emmet Stagg, chief whip for the Labour Party, said cuts averaging 28 per cent since 2009 to the maximum rent a person on rent allowance may pay, were "creating real difficulties and hardships" including homelessness, for people across the State.
He would use "every bit of muscle" he had in government to reverse the cuts.
Mr Stagg was speaking at the publication of research by the homelessness charity Focus Ireland, on rent supplement cuts since 2009.
Rent supplement, at a cost of €500 million, is paid to 97,000 people on social welfare living in the private-rented sector. In January, Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton said the rent being paid was too high in some areas and issued new maximum rents tenants could pay. The cuts are projected to save €22 million this year.
The personal contribution a tenant would have to make also increased from €24 per week to €30 this year. It had been €13 in 2009.
Mike Allen, head of advocacy with Focus Ireland, said rents had not come down and in some areas had gone up, forcing significant numbers of tenants into housing that did not meet minimum legal standards and others into homelessness. The cuts were also preventing homeless people finding accommodation.
The cuts should be reversed "as a matter of urgency", while the way rent limits were set should be transparent.
"It's Government policy to keep mortgage-payers in their homes, while the same Government's policy is causing people in the the rented sector to lose their homes."
Mr Stagg, TD for north Kildare, said two constituents at his clinic in Celbridge had become homeless as their landlord would not reduce the rent to meet new thresholds.
The report "Out of Reach: The impact of changes in Rent Supplement", is small in scale and based on interviews with ten tenants in Dublin and Galway and a survey of 27 landlords and agents.
It found widespread payment of "top-ups" by tenants, where the tenants take accommodation where the rent exceeds the threshold but they "top-up" the supplement, on top of the €30 per week contribution they must make.
There was criticism of the fact decisions on applications for rent supplement were no longer made by community welfare officers in some regions - notably Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare - but in central rent units, with no face-to-face contact between an applicant and decision maker.
Also the free-phone number for applicants to discuss their application was now a low-call number, where a person could be on hold for over an hour, running up mobile phone bills of "up to €40".
