T7. Ms Bunting asked the Minister for Communities what action he is taking to deal with the causes of poverty, given that we often deal with the effects, and although Members have heard a lot about his anti-poverty strategy today, we all recently received an email from the Trussell Trust that said that almost four in 10 — 37% — people who claimed universal credit in Northern Ireland ran out of food in the past month and did not have enough money to buy more. (AQT 517/22-27)

It is absolutely right that the Member raises that issue. My Department does significant work to tackle the impact of poverty, but that is not good enough any more. We need to tackle the root causes of poverty. There are a number of issues that we have discussed before, and it is about housing, health and education, but what is really important is getting people into work. That is one of the greatest barriers that people face right now to getting out of poverty. That means that we need to be in a position where we are giving tailored support, where necessary, and I have raised that with the Government and given them examples of where we have been able to make a difference.

You only have to take some of the figures around disability and employment. We are way behind where we should be and way behind the rest of the United Kingdom, and we need to ensure that we have the tools to get people the support that they need to get back into work, because that is one of the best ways that we can tackle poverty.

I am grateful to the Minister for his answer. My constituents, along with many others across Northern Ireland, are living in damp and mouldy conditions, and because they are in poverty, they are not able to pay for remedial works themselves. The Trussell Trust points out that just over four in 10 people claiming universal credit in Northern Ireland are either behind on Bills and credit commitments or are finding it a constant struggle to keep up with them. They cannot afford to do the work themselves, and if they were able to afford to do it themselves, the Housing Executive would not stand over the work. Doubtless, there is a considerable backlog of maintenance. What will the Minister do to tackle the delays in maintenance across Housing Executive properties?

Those are serious issues, and I encourage the Member to feel free to come to me if she feels that there specific examples that she thinks that I can help her with. In respect of those other, wider issues and what we can do to help, she mentioned the Housing Executive and reiterates why it is important that we ensure that the Housing Executive gets the powers that it needs to borrow against its assets to make improvements in the homes that we are talking about. That will save us money later on. I will say it again and again: if we can prevent problems at an earlier stage, we will end up saving not just money but a lot of grief for people. That is why we need to make sure that this is changed and that we have the proper investment. Revitalisation is the way for us to do that.