Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

Rent supplement is administered on behalf of the Department by the Health Service Executive, HSE, as part of the supplementary welfare allowance scheme. The purpose of the rent supplement scheme is to provide short-term income support to eligible people living in private rented accommodation, whose means are insufficient to meet their accommodation costs and who do not have accommodation available to them from any other source. The numbers claiming rent supplement have remained fairly constant in the past three years. At the end of 2005, these were 60,200 rent supplements in payment. At the end of 2006 there were 59,900 and at the end of 2007 there were 59,700. At the end of April 2008 numbers had increased to 62,000.

Expenditure on the rent supplement scheme has increased in the past three years from €368 million in 2005, to €388 million in 2006 and €391 million in 2007. Some €392 million has been provided for the scheme in 2008. The rent scheme has also witnessed an increase in the duration of entitlement with almost 32,000 recipients now getting a supplement for 18 months or more. For this reason, the scheme has to be viewed in the context of overall housing policy, particularly in the case of long-term claimants.

In response to this situation, in July 2004 the Government introduced new rental assistance arrangements which include the rental accommodation scheme, RAS. This gives local authorities specific responsibility for meeting the longer-term housing needs of people receiving rent supplement for 18 months or more, on a phased implementation basis. Housing authorities can meet the housing needs of these individuals through a range of approaches including the traditional range of social housing options, the voluntary housing sector and, in particular, a public private partnership type rental accommodation scheme.

To date just under 6,500 rent supplement cases have been transferred to RAS units. Almost 3,000 of these are in the voluntary and co-operative housing sector and 3,500 are in private rented accommodation. Housing authorities have also transferred more than 6,400 recipients to other social housing options. When the new rental assistance arrangements have been fully implemented it is expected that in excess of 30,000 individuals will have transferred from the rent supplement scheme to the local authorities under the rental accommodation scheme or other social housing schemes.

The Department is working closely with the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to ensure that RAS meets its objective of catering for those on long-term rent supplement.

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