Mr. Brendan Kenny:

Yes, we eliminate the six months that would have been required. My view on HAP is that it is a great scheme. It has been hugely successful in Dublin. There are 40,000 HAP tenancies in the country, 9,000 in Dublin, and DCC has 60% of those. The level of evictions from HAP is very low. There is an element of security of tenure. I know it is not long term but generally people are very happy with the accommodation they get. In some cases, in their view they can get accommodation in better parts of the city or county.

There has been too much reliance on the private sector, but we had no option. There was no alternative in recent years because it takes so long to build. HAP has been very successful in that context. It is our ambition to gradually reduce the number of HAP tenancies. The reason the figures are so high in the delivery report is because we have taken over the rent supplement. They are not new HAP tenancies. That is something we have to do and that has increased the figures. We did 240 homeless HAP tenancies in July and 130 mainstream tenancies. That is a total of 370 for just one month. The properties are still out there and the market is very much alive. It is a powerful option for the city council at the moment. We are probably too much reliant on it but it works very well. Without it, we would be in much bigger trouble than we are in at the moment.