Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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389. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the annual cost of the housing assistance payment in each of the years from its inception until 2022, by county in tabular form. [54826/22]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) is a flexible and immediate form of social housing support for people with a long-term housing need. Any household assessed by their local authority as eligible for social housing is immediately eligible for HAP. These households must find their own accommodation in the private rental sector.

The HAP scheme started in 2014 and at the end of Q2 2022, 104,702 HAP tenancies had been set-up since the scheme commenced, of which there were more than 60,700 households actively in receipt of HAP support and over 32,400 separate landlords and agents providing accommodation to households supported by the scheme.

The table below shows total expenditure by my Department for the HAP scheme for each year 2014–Q2 2022:

Data in relation to funding provided by the State for HAP tenancies in 2019?2021, broken down by local authority area, can be found on my Department’s website at this link: www.gov.ie/en/collection/6060e-overall-social-housing-provision/#housing-assistance-payment

This funding represents the portion paid by my Department after receipt of the differential rent which is paid by the tenant to the local authority. It does not include administration costs related to the Scheme.

HAP is funded through a combination of Exchequer monies and tenant differential rents collected in respect of HAP tenancies.

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 costs via the HAP SSC.