Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is a huge amount of detail on the HAPs. It also gives a detail by local authority area. When we look at Dún Laoghaire, and usage figures around local authorities, it is 47%, 37% and 80%. Obviously, it is pointing to a particular problem in Dún Laoghaire that other local authorities are not experiencing. Dún Laoghaire's numbers seem to be higher than other areas. We will have to look at what is happening there. There are particular pressure points because of lack of supply in the market because it is a very desirable area to live. The point of publishing this document was to give greater transparency over how exactly HAP is being used. I am sorry if the Deputy has not had a chance to see it yet. There is a lot of detail in it. If the Deputy wants, we can go through it again.

I know as well that we cannot rely on HAP to meet our social housing needs for our citizens. The joint committee recommended 50,000 homes go into the social housing stock. We secured additional funding of €500 million into the capital budget out to 2021 so we can achieve that goal from the committee. Given the number of people on the housing list, we need another solution as well and that solution is the private rental sector and it is the HAP. It is not misleading in terms of numbers because if a person uses the HAP payment that is meeting his or her housing need.

People who are getting the HAP are able to use the transfer list. We have numbers around the people who are availing of the transfer list as well. It is important to note we have a commitment of €6 billion to increase the stock of social housing. Last year we came in 2,000 units above the target we anticipated bringing in, which I think is somewhere in the region of 40% above target. That is very welcome. As we get to 2020 and 2021, we will be placing more people into social housing stock than we will be relying on the HAP. That is where this is going. We cannot get there overnight though. We do have a chronic undersupply of housing. While we are making progress in the first 18 months, we do have to rely on the private rental sector. That is why we brought in the homeless HAP as a preventative measure.