Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

283. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of RAS, HAP and privately owned SHCEP long-term lease tenancies inactive on 31 December or each year since each scheme was introduced, in tabular form; and the annual cost of each scheme for each of these years. [47443/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Social Housing Current Expenditure Programme (SHCEP) and Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS) support the delivery of social housing by providing financial support to local authorities and Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) for the leasing of houses and apartments.  The properties are secured by local authorities for social housing under leases or availability agreements which provide the local authorities with the authority to allocate the properties to tenants from their housing lists in accordance with their scheme of letting priorities.

Where a dwelling becomes vacant, the terms of the agreements provide that lease payments, to be made by the local authorities to the owners, continue for a maximum period of 3 consecutive months in order to allow for re-tenanting of the dwelling by local authorities.  If the dwelling remains vacant at the end of that 3 month period, it is deemed to be inactive. No payment is made by my Department in respect of inactive dwellings. A property under a lease or availability agreement may become vacant because a tenant has moved to other accommodation or is deceased. During the period of vacancy the local authority will undertake to allocate the property to another household in accordance with its scheme of letting priorities and on occasion, repair work may be required before it can be relet.

Under the Housing Assistance Payment scheme (HAP), a tenant sources their own accommodation, and the tenancy agreement is between the tenant and the landlord and is covered by the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 (as amended). HAP support is paid in arrears and only provided in respect of active tenancies that meet the terms and condition of the scheme.

The Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 gives legislative recognition to rental accommodation availability agreements, including both SHCEP and RAS agreements, as a form of social housing support since 1 April 2011. The number of inactive privately owned dwellings under RAS and SHCEP, and the annual cost of each scheme for each year since then, is set out in Tables 1 and 2.  My Department does not collect data relating to periods of vacancy of less than three months.

HAP was provided for by the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014 and Table 3 provides details in relation to the cost of the HAP scheme in each year since. The term "privately owned" excludes dwellings owned by AHBs, unsold affordable dwellings and dwellings owned by National Asset Residential Property Services (NARPS).

The number of inactive dwellings under SHCEP and RAS combined at end of 2016 (i.e. 315) constituted approximately 1% of the total number of 29,200 dwellings under the schemes at that stage.

Table 1: SHCEP

*Of this figure, a total of €7,933,651 was self-funded by local authorities using funding from their RAS Reserves.

Table 2: RAS

* An additional €14.84m in RAS recoupment claims was offset against local authority RAS Reserves in 2015.

** An additional €13.9m in RAS recoupment claims was offset against local authority RAS Reserves in 2016.

Table 3: HAP

* It is anticipated that the Exchequer funding for 2017 of €152.7 million will be fully expended on the operation of the HAP scheme at year end.