Recommendations on Housing Assistance Payment rates are due before the Minister for Housing by the end of March.
Senior officials from the Department of Housing were before the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee this afternoon, to discuss the department's spending in 2020.
They told TDs that a review conducted by the Housing Agency was completed before Christmas.
However, the Department of Housing is now working with the authors of the report to "clarify some of the data sets."
Local authorities have discretion to increase HAP rates by 20% on a case-by-case basis and 50% for families at risk of homelessness.
The review conducted by the Housing Agency considered changing the 20% discretionary rate.
Around 28% of HAP tenants had to top up their payments in the first half of 2019, according to the Comptroller and Auditor General, who also addressed today's hearing.
There has been no collection of data on HAP top-ups since then, with the Comptroller and Auditor General noting that the Department of Housing does not collect such information.
Fine Gael's Alan Dillon told the committee that there has been an "enormous" increase in the number of HAP tenants contacting TDs who are being forced to top up their payments due to rent increases.
The committee also heard that there was a "dramatic drop-off" in HAP accommodation inspections due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Officials from the department revealed that there were around 24,000 HAP accommodation inspections in 2020, compared to approximately 40,000 inspections in 2019.
Labour's Sean Sherlock told members that figures he received through a parliamentary question showed that 11,731 inspections took place up to the end of quarter three in 2021.
He called for increased resourcing of local authorities to increase inspections, adding that some HAP tenants were living in "Dickensian" conditions.
Mr Sherlock told officials that people are in a "major bind" because they cannot ask the landlord to fix or improve their accommodation because they will be "on their ear before they know it".
"I invite you to visit some of these yourself," he said.
Caroline Timmons, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Housing, told Mr Sherlock that the department would also like to see an increase in inspections.
In 2020, the Department of Housing spent almost €465 million on HAP, supporting nearly 60,000 tenancies which is an average of €7,800 per tenancy.
Sinn Féin's Imelda Munster was told that there is over 90,000 state supported tenancies in Ireland today, over 60,000 of those are HAP tenancies.
