Ms Caroline Curley:

I will respond to the Deputy as best I can. As she stated, Limerick is running the pilot on HAP and the reason to have a pilot scheme is to try to tweak or find out any issues that might arise. All I can do is to confirm that HAP is there and the landlords are embracing it. More than 40 landlords have agreed to sign up at this point. They have tenants in receipt of rent supplement and what is in it for them is they are guaranteed their full payment. Even at that, it is in arrears, but they seem to be happy to come on board with the full payment upfront and from the local authority, as opposed to relying on the tenant to pay them. They are in there with that. We have come across a number where the cap has become an issue. We are running the HAP pilot on an administrative basis and the way we are dealing with those is simply by recording them, because part of this is the learning exercise, that is, to be able to go back and ask what policy is needed to deal with that. To date, it only has been anecdotal evidence that there is an issue with the caps whereas we now are documenting it and it will allow for a better decision to be made.

As for the staff, I did not grasp fully the Deputy's ratio. All I can confirm is what we did in Limerick. HAP is in competition with RAS because one is dealing with the same cohort of people, that is, people who have a long-term housing need who have been in receipt of rent supplement for more than 18 months. In order to run the pilot in Limerick, we made the decision to take staff from our RAS unit. That way, they could hit the ground running. They already were familiar with a number of the clients, were familiar with the landlords and were able to deal with it. It remains to be seen, as we go on and take on more, what the resources will be but again, this is what the pilot is there for, that is, to learn whether we can cope, to learn what are the issues and to decide on what the staffing levels should be to deal with it.