Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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215. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of payments that have been made to approved housing bodies under payment and availability agreements; and the length of time in months for each payment by each local authority in tabular form. [25881/22]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) are important partners for local authorities in the delivery of social housing. My Department and local authorities administer a number of funding programmes to assist AHBs with the cost of building, acquiring and leasing new social housing homes under a Payment and Availability (P&A) Agreement with the local authority.

For each property or group of properties, the P&A agreement sets out the details of the properties; details in respect of nomination rights of the local authority; the payment that will be made to the AHB; how that payment will be periodically reviewed; how the tenant’s rent will be charged in accordance with the relevant Differential Rent Scheme; and the conditions in relation to the maintenance of the properties and the provision of services to tenants.

The agreement also sets out that payments may be withheld if the terms are not complied with by the AHB or, if necessary, the agreement can be terminated. P&As are generally between 120 and 360 months in length. The level of payment made by the local authority to the AHB varies depending on the type and source of the property, ranging from 80% to 95% of market rent.

At the end of 2021, a total of 14,367 social housing homes were secured from AHBs by local authorities using P&A agreements. In 2021, €190.8 million was provided by my Department to local authorities to meet the terms of these agreements with AHBs. This figure is broken down by local authority in the table below.

Table 1: 2021 Payments under SHCEP for P&A Funding