I don't know? Do you?How are people coming into this country and getting rent paid to the tune of €1300 per month and yet other people are expected to live on nothing.
The maximum levels of rent allowance are detailed here e.g a single mother in Dublin with two children could get €1,200 p.m. towards rent. This would not necessarily involve welfare fraud and rent allowance is not restricted to black Africans. The vast majority of recipients are white and Irish.
Please note that the person who ultimately gets this money is the landlord. I have ranted elsewhere to the effect that rent allowance is a subsidy to speculators and developers and that social housing should be used instead.
I think the real gripe that people have is, that the typical nuclear family, with only one person working, could not hope to rent accommodation of this calibre i.e. costing 1,200 p.m. In such cases they are often left with GP, medicine, school fees and a lot more besides. It is very difficult for such a couple to cope and it must be very hard to watch others receive handouts.
This is a moot point IMO. The point is that these people have the money to pay said landlord whereas many 'legitimate' (for want of a better word) couples do not. They face the stress of trying to make the rent every day. Surely the onus is on social welfare to weed out the fraudsters.
Surely the onus is on social welfare to weed out the fraudsters.
Of course people are free to go out, stay out, visit friends, go on holiday, so there's no fraud in someone not sleeping in the bed provided, and it would be wrong to force them to admit where they were staying.
-Rd
imo enforcing this would involve an unacceptable degree of intrusion into peoples private lives.
Presumably part of the issue is the constitutional definition of family which the state is obliged to defend/support? Until that is widened certain anomalies will persist.
If you have two people who are both entitled individually to have their rent paid, and those two people happen to be willing to share a house, or even a bed, doesn't it make sense to let them live toghether without cutting the other (non rent) benefits that they are each entitled to.
I'm not sure that they would lose any benefits by living together in this example. The only drawback I can see is that in order to maintain those benefits the man would have to "officially" move out and leave his family if he found a job.
Presumably part of the issue is the constitutional definition of family which the state is obliged to defend/support? Until that is widened certain anomalies will persist.
imo strictly enforcing the regulations would involve an unacceptable degree of intrusion into peoples private lives and an infringement of their civil liberties. Should there be welfare enforcers hiding under people's beds or in the bushes outside their bedroom windows in order to ensure that they don't have any overnight guests that are in gainful employment.
Moderator note: split from this thread Is welfare fraud my only option?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?