Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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1674. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the annual spend for 2015 and 2016 and the projected spend for 2017 and 2018 on leasing, HAP and RAS agreements between local authorities and landlords broken down by authority and by type of agreement; and the number of these arrangements that are direct transfers from rent allowance arrangements. [36345/17]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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1675. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of leasing, RAS and HAP agreements that are being supported by his Department in 2015, 2016 and projected for 2017 broken down by local authority and type of arrangement. [36346/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 1674 and 1675 together.

The three current expenditure funded housing schemes – the Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS), the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) and the Social Housing Current Expenditure Programme (SHCEP) - are critical components of the accelerated delivery of social housing envisaged under the Rebuilding Ireland Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness. It is anticipated that more than 111,000 households will have their housing need met by one of these schemes in the period to 2021.

The annual cost of the three schemes to the exchequer is made up of the continuing cost of supporting the tenancies and contracts in place at the end of the previous year, and the additional cost of the new tenancies and contracts supported over the course of the year to which the allocation relates. The cost of the schemes in future years is therefore dependent on the number of housing units or tenancies falling to be funded within each of the schemes and the rental or lease payments involved.

The Social Housing Current Expenditure Programme (SHCEP), previously referred to as the Social Housing Leasing Initiative, was introduced in February 2009. Since then the programme has been expanded on a number of occasions to provide for new types of supply and to involve a greater range of agencies and bodies in providing accommodation. SHCEP supports the delivery of social housing by providing financial support to local authorities for the long term leasing of houses and apartments from private owners, developers and Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs). Properties made available under the programme are used to accommodate households from local authority waiting lists. Leased properties are allocated to tenants in accordance with the relevant local authority’s allocation scheme. My Department recoups the cost of the agreements that are made with private property owners, including AHBs, to the local authorities. Expenditure includes the ongoing cost of contractual arrangements and relevant cost of new contracts made within the year.

Details of the funding provided and drawn-down by Local Authorities under SHCEP in 2015 and 2016 are provided in the following table. Exchequer funding for SHCEP in 2017 is €83.947m; the allocation for SHCEP in 2018 will form part of the Estimates process.

SHCEP is targeted to secure an additional 2,250 social housing units in 2017 using a variety of different delivery mechanisms, with each unit secured under a long-term availability/ lease arrangement. Details on the number of SCHEP agreements supported by my Department in 2015 and 2016 are published on my Department’s website at the following link: .

There are currently over 24,700 households being supported by the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) scheme in 31 local authority areas. The scheme is funded through a combination of Exchequer monies and tenant differential rents collected in respect of HAP tenancies. The exchequer outturn for the HAP scheme in 2015 was €15.64 million, while in 2016, it was in excess of €57 million. The majority of this funding supported the on-going costs of tenancies established in 2015 that continued into 2016, and the costs of the 12,075 new households supported by the scheme in 2016. Budget 2017 has increased the Exchequer funding for the HAP scheme to €152.7 million, in order to meet the continuing costs of existing HAP households, and the costs of the additional 15,000 households, targeted under Rebuilding Ireland, to be supported by HAP in 2017.

Limerick City and County Council provides a highly effective HAP transactional shared service on behalf of all local authorities. This HAP Shared Services Centre (SSC) manages all HAP related rental transactions for the tenant, local authority and landlord. Accordingly, my Department does not recoup individual local authorities in respect of HAP rental payments in their administrative areas but rather recoups all landlord cost via the HAP SSC. A breakdown of average HAP payments to landlords in each local authority area at 31 December 2016, and a breakdown of the number of households supported by HAP, including the number of Rent Supplement transfers, in each local authority area at 31 December 2016, end Quarter 1 2017 and end Quarter 2 2017, are available on my Department’s website at the following link: .

All households accommodated under the Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS) have transferred directly from rent supplement. My Department is currently updating and reviewing the RAS data collection and management process. In that context, tenancy data relating to 2016 is currently in the process of being gathered from local authorities and will be published on my Department’s website when available. Data relating to the annual RAS spend from 2011 to 2016 and the number of households availing of support under RAS from 2011 to 2015 can be found on my Department's website at the following link: . The provisional data indicates that some 1,256 new households were transferred from Rent Supplement to RAS in 2016.

In total, 1,645 transfers have taken place from 01 January 2016 to 31st May 2017 leaving a remaining target of 355 households to be transferred to RAS under the Social Housing Strategy national target of 2,000 transfers for the period 2016/2017, indicating that 82% of the total transfer target has been achieved to this point in the two year period.

It is not possible to project the number of tenancies that will be supported by RAS at the end of 2017 as numbers in RAS will vary as contracts end, tenants move on to other properties, landlords join or withdraw from the scheme, new tenancies are allocated or vacancies in contracted units are filled. €134.338 million has been allocated to RAS in 2017. The budgetary process for 2018 has not yet been finalised.

SHCEP Funding: 2015 and 2016