Our Bill is simple. It would make social housing universally available. It is the opposite to what the Government has been doing. The Government has effectively, for decades, been copying Maggie Thatcher by cutting the amount of social housing being built and then ensuring they shrink the pool of people who are eligible to apply for it. It has done that by refusing to increase the income limits in line with average wages. The result is that only the poorest and lowest paid households, those that are on social welfare, are eligible. It concentrates deprivation in social housing. It leads to social issues and contributes to a financial crisis for councils when they say they are not raising enough through rents to cover maintenance. Universal social housing would mean higher paid workers paying higher rents, easily covering maintenance. Instead, this is being used as a reason to hike up rents in Dublin City Council. They will try to do it in South Dublin County Council. It is happening across the country because it is being pushed for by the Government, which is attacking some of the most deprived communities by making them pay more. For HAP tenants it is hitting them twice because they will pay more in a top-up to a private landlord because of Government policy and more to the council as tenants. It is all linked to a strategy of effectively getting rid of differential income-based rents. If you read the Government strategy, it is about merging council and social housing with cost rental over time. That is the opposite to the direction we need to go. We need universal access to social housing, which is the idea that people pay what they can afford to pay - they pay a percentage of their income, and they get decent quality accommodation. That should not be too much to ask.

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