Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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609. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of social housing current expenditure programme, SCHEP, tenancies in which properties are owned by private landlords in 2017, by local authority area and source; the cost of these tenancies in 2017; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5338/18]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Of the 50,000 social housing units to be delivered under the Rebuilding Ireland action plan for housing and homelessness, just over 10,000 will be secured by local authorities and approved housing bodies, AHBs, under leasing arrangements from a range of different sources, including direct leasing by both local authorities and AHBs from private owners.

The social housing current expenditure programme, SHCEP, administered by my Department, supports this delivery of social housing by providing financial support to local authorities and AHBs for the leasing of houses and apartments. Properties made available under the programme are used to accommodate households from local authority waiting lists and are allocated in accordance with the relevant local authority's allocation scheme. 

To end December 2017, the total number of operational units under SHCEP is 10,152. Details of the number of these dwellings, which are privately owned dwellings secured directly by local authorities and AHBs, are set out in the tables below.  The term "privately owned" excludes dwellings supported under SHCEP that are owned by AHBs, unsold affordable dwellings, and dwellings owned by the National Asset Management Agency vehicle, National Asset Residential Property Services, NARPS. 

Data on payments made under SHCEP to AHBs is held on a cumulative basis only and includes both payments made in respect of dwellings leased by AHBs from private owners and payments made in respect of dwellings owned by AHBs. A breakdown of the amount paid to AHBs in respect of the leasing of dwellings from private owners only is not available; however, as a result of changes made in 2017 to the systems used for the recording of financial data, this information will be available in 2018 and subsequent years.

Table 1: Dwellings leased by local authorities from private owners

Table 2: Dwellings leased by AHBs from private owners*

*A financial breakdown is currently unavailable for AHB privately leased dwellings. This will be available from 2018 onwards