Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection the timeframe for when rent supplements will be transferred from the Health Service Executive to the various local authorities. [44685/12]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The purpose of the rent supplement scheme is to provide short-term 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 overall aim is to provide short term assistance, and not to act as an alternative to the other social housing schemes operated by the Exchequer. There are currently approximately 90,000 rent supplement recipients for which the Government has provided €436 million for 2012.

The community welfare service and the community welfare officers administering supplementary welfare allowance, including rent supplement, formally transferred from the Health Service Executive to the Department with effect from 1 October 2011.

In March 2012, the Government approved in principle to transfer responsibility for the provision of rental assistance to persons with a long term housing need from the Department, currently provided through rent supplement, to housing authorities using a new Housing Assistance Payment (HAP). It is planned that pilot testing of HAP arrangements will commence during the second half of 2013 with general roll out and commencement of transfers from January 2014.

A multi-agency steering group has been established to develop proposals to give effect to this transfer. The group is chaired by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and consists of representatives from the Departments of Social Protection; Public Expenditure and Reform; Office of the Revenue Commissioners; the County and City Managers Association, and the Housing Agency.

The new arrangements will achieve a key Government commitment of removing barriers to employment and at the same time returning rent supplement to its original purpose of a short-term income support.