Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

All three of the current expenditure funded schemes – the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, the housing assistance payment, HAP, and the social housing current expenditure programme, SHCEP, are critical components to the accelerated delivery of social housing envisaged under Rebuilding Ireland - an Action Plan on Housing and Homelessness. It is anticipated that more than 111,000 households will have their housing need met by one of these schemes in the period to 2021.

The annual cost of the three schemes to the Exchequer is made up of the continuing cost of supporting the tenancies and contracts in place at the end of the previous year and the additional cost of the new tenancies and contracts supported over the course of the year to which the allocation relates. The cost of the schemes in future years is, therefore, dependent on the number of housing units or tenancies falling to be funded within each of the schemes and the rental or lease payments involved.

In 2017, the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme will support an additional 15,000 households, the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, will support an additional 1,000 households transferring from rent supplement and the social housing current expenditure programme, SHCEP, is targeted to secure an additional 2,250 social housing units using a variety of different delivery mechanisms, with each unit secured under the long-term availability lease arrangement. This level of increased output will necessitate increased financial support for these programmes in 2017.

The annual Estimates process is currently under way and my Department is working with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to finalise the necessary allocations for the delivery of these schemes in 2017.

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