Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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163. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the targets for 2015 for the provision of social housing units under the rental accommodation scheme and leasing in each local authority; how many units have been provided in each local authority under these schemes in 2015 to date; how much or how far under-target is the provision for 2015 (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43060/15]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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The Social Housing Strategy 2020targets the provision of over 110,000 social housing units to 2020, through the delivery of 35,000 new social housing units and meeting the housing needs of some 75,000 households through the Housing Assistance Payment and Rental Accommodation Scheme.  On 1 April 2015, I announced provisional funding allocations totalling €1.5 billion for all local authorities, to meet an ambitious delivery target of 22,882 social housing units out to 2017. Details of the individual targets set for local authorities can be found on my Department’s website at: .

The Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS) is a social housing support introduced to cater for the accommodation needs of persons who are in receipt of long term rent supplement. Persons normally must be in receipt of continuous rent supplement for a minimum period of 18 months, and be assessed as having a long term housing need. The target number of households to be transferred from Rent Supplement to RAS over the period of the Strategy is 6,000, of which a national target of 2,000 has been set for 2015.

Under the Social Housing Current Expenditure Programme (SHCEP) units can be delivered in a variety of ways and local authorities are encouraged to explore and use all of these mechanisms. These mechanisms include units purchased, leased or constructed by approved housing bodies and both multi-unit developments and individual units leased or acquired through rental arrangements directly by local authorities.  Units leased by local authorities or approved housing bodies can be for up to 20 years.  The accommodation provided is made available to persons on local authority waiting lists, persons with long term housing needs in receipt of rent supplement or persons who are homeless.  A target of 3,000 units has been set for delivery in 2015 under SHCEP. Local authorities together with approved housing bodies are working consistently to achieve targets under the SHCEP scheme.

The information requested in relation to progress against the targets set for RAS and SHCEP up to the end of October 2015 is set out in the table.

While the targets set out in the Strategy for delivery in 2015 are ambitious, I am confident that the investment that the Government is making in social housing supply is delivering real results. Together, the RAS and SHCEP Schemes had met the social housing needs of an additional 2,501 households in the 10 months to end October this year.

Furthermore, I am committed to facilitating local authorities returning the maximum number of void social housing units to productive use as possible in 2015. In addition to the original funding I provided for this purpose in 2015, and conscious of the impact of the pressures in the private rental market on delivery under the RAS and SHCEP schemes, I have increased the budget allocation in order deliver an estimated 2,500 void units back into productive use this year.

It should be noted also that 18 local authorities are now operating the Housing Assistance Payment Scheme. While delivery targets were not set for individual local authorities, more than 5,500 tenancies have been established under the scheme to date.