Seanad Report: The payment of rent supplements had been restricted last year partly due to young people from middle-class families moving out of their homes because they fancied a "nice pad" in the Financial Services Centre or somewhere similar, the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Mr Brennan, explained.
Many of them could never afford the properties they rented, so they claimed rent supplement. He had abolished the restriction that rent had to be paid for six months before a supplement could be claimed. In its place, tenants were now required to show that they needed help due to changed circumstances.
Commenting on a report on how some migrant workers are treated, the Leader of the House, Ms Mary O'Rourke, said it was awful that people whom they as politicians would meet or know about were employing immigrants for domestic duties in a completely unacceptable way and were treating them inhumanely because of what was discerned as their lower status.
The report by the Migrants Rights Centre on the exploitation of such people had made her extremely angry. Its contents painted a wicked picture. Bonded labour was a mild term for what it revealed.