Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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725. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will provide, in tabular form, the annual cost of the housing assistance payment in County Meath, between 2011 and 2014 and in 2015 to date; and the number of landlords in receipt of each payment in the county. [29678/15]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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Further to the enactment of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014 on 28 July 2014, the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) has been rolled out to all categories of households in 13 local authority areas on a pilot basis. Dublin City Council is also implementing a HAP pilot for homeless households in the Dublin region on behalf of the 4 Dublin local authorities. There are now over 2,600 households in receipt of HAP across the local authority areas taking part in the statutory pilot. During the legislation’s passage through the Oireachtas in July 2014 an undertaking was given that a progress report on the first phase of the HAP pilot would be prepared for the relevant Oireachtas Committee. I submitted a report to the Oireachtas Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht at the end of April 2015, and an information session for Oireachtas members and their staff was held on 23 June 2015. Based on the findings of that review, the second phase of the HAP statutory pilot has recently commenced with the HAP scheme becoming operational in Donegal County Council on 25 May 2015, in Offaly County Council on the 15 June 2015 and in Carlow, Clare and Tipperary County Councils and Cork City Council from 29 June 2015.

Consideration is currently being given to the sequencing of a further cohort of local authorities to commence HAP on an incremental basis this year; I can confirm that my Department is in contact with Meath County Council with a view to co mmencing the HAP scheme in the area later this year. No HAP related expenditure has arisen to date in the Meath County Council area.