Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Social Protection further to Parliamentary Question Nos. 136 and 144 on 21 March 2013, in which she stated she had obtained data from the Private Residential Tenancies Board including a snapshot of the PRTB’s database which stores all annual rental values and relevant addresses, if she will confirm the way accessing such information was permitted in the context of data protection legislation [16295/13]

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 86,000 rent supplement recipients for which the Government has provided €403 million for 2013. As part of the review of rent limits, the Department received information from the Private Residential Tenancies Board (PRTB) from its register of tenancies. This data exchange is provided for by legislation under section 146 of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 and section 261 of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005. The data snapshot provided contains details of registered tenancies and does not contain names of tenants or landlords. There are no data protection implications from the use of this information.