Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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55. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection if she will provide in tabular form the annual cost of payments in County Meath between 2011 and 2015 under the rent allowance and rent supplement schemes; and the number of landlords in receipt of each payment in the county. [29679/15]

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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56. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection the number of applications that have been approved under article 38 to raise the rent supplement cap for constituents in County Meath since January 2015; and if she will provide in tabular form the number by month and area in the county. [29680/15]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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64. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection the approximate cost of increasing the maximum rent limits in the rent supplement scheme by 5% in the four Dublin local authority areas, Cork city and Galway city; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29771/15]

Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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104. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection if she will provide in tabular form the amount spent on rent supplement by local authority in each year from 2013 to 2014 and in 2015 to date; and if she will provide estimates on the expected savings to the departmental budget by transferring recipients from the rent supplement scheme to the housing assistant payment scheme. [30195/15]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party)
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120. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection if she will provide an annual breakdown by scheme of all payments made by her Department to private landlords in the years 2008 to 2014 and in 2015 to date. [30406/15]

Kevin Humphreys (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 55, 56, 64, 104 and 120 together.

Rent supplement plays a vital role in supporting approximately 67,000 families and individuals at a cost of €298 million. Details of rent supplement recipients and expenditure each year since 2008 is provided in the attached tabular statement. Information on rent supplement expenditure by county is not available. A county breakdown by recipients is also provided, however a breakdown by local authority is not maintained.

An overall 5% increase to rent supplement would cost approximately €15 million in a full year. A breakdown of this cost on a county basis is not available, however the costs to apply such an increase in the Dublin, Cork and Galway regions, which accounts for over half of the customer base, would account for a significant proportion of this additional cost.

Under the legislative provisions governing rent supplement, the Department’s relationship is with the tenant, there is no direct relationship between the landlord and the Department in the administration of the scheme. Payments are generally made directly to the landlord by the tenant. At the end of December 2014, there were over 49,000 landlords providing tenancies to rent supplement recipients.

In response to the current housing difficulties, DSP has implemented preventative measures under rent supplement to provide for flexibility in assessing customers’ individual accommodation needs through the National Tenancy Sustainment Framework. Under this approach, tenant’s circumstances are considered on a case-by-case basis, and rents are being increased above prescribed limits throughout the country as appropriate. This flexible approach has already assisted over 2,660 rent supplement households nationwide, of which 63 cases are in place in Meath, to retain their rented accommodation through the payment of increased rent supplement. A breakdown of these awards by month and locality is not readily available.

The Department’s strategic policy direction is to return rent supplement to its original purpose of being a short term income support by transferring responsibility for persons with long term housing needs to the local authorities under the new Housing Assistance Payment (HAP). HAP is currently in operation in 13 local authority areas in which there are approximately 2,700 HAP tenancies already in place. The financial provision for rent supplement for 2015 represents a transfer of funding in excess of €20 million to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government to support HAP. Estimates on savings to this Department in future years would be based on the numbers of customers in receipt of rent supplement and the progress of the roll out of HAP.

Table 1: Rent Supplement: Recipient Numbers & Expenditure: 2008 to Present

Table 2 – Rent Supplement Recipients by County End of 2011-2015