Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy McAuliffe for his questions. There is no question that the housing assistance payment is a significant cost to the State. We have to make sure we tip the balance back from providing the short-term measures that we need to provide for people. We are looking to support an additional 15,800 new households to have their housing needs met under HAP or the rental accommodation scheme, RAS. It is a necessary measure in the short term to help people, with a particular focus on helping people out of homelessness. The thrust of the Government's plan in the new programme for Government is to increase the provision of new-build public homes. That is why we set a significant target of 12,750 homes for this year and bringing vacant stock back into use.

There is no doubt there are value issues with regard to HAP but we come under understandable pressure from parts of the country where people want to see the HAP limits raised. To put this in context, 77,503 households are covered under HAP, RAS and other schemes. We cannot switch off that support. We need a phased approach to deliver more than 50,000 public homes and help people out of that situation. We will always need some form of short-term rental support for families and we have significant work to do.

On the energy retrofit programme, as the Deputy will be aware, we have the midlands retrofit programme, for which €10 million was provided initially. We have provided €30 million and €65 million in total for retrofitting. Most of the target for delivery of retrofit is in our own housing stock. The target is to complete a deep retrofit of approximately 2,500 homes to improve their energy efficiency and, most importantly, to reduce energy use and bills and make public homes more comfortable and healthier places for people to live in.

On Traveller accommodation, the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, will be before the joint committee meeting later. It is a concern to me and all parties that the expenditure allocated to this area has not been fully utilised. We want to see that change. We have allocated €15.5 million for the delivery of Traveller accommodation. The Minister of State is heavily involved with local authorities and Traveller organisations to ensure that funding is spent and utilised. It was for this reason that we exempted Traveller accommodation and most social housing from the construction restrictions earlier in the year.

We have allocated €65 million for retrofitting social housing.