Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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302. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government his plans to make compliant non-compliant HAP tenancies; and if it is the policy of his Department to prioritise direct building, rather than relying on HAP to alleviate the rental crisis. [56736/22]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The minimum standards for rental accommodation are prescribed in the Housing (Standards for Rented Houses) Regulations 2019. All landlords have a legal obligation to ensure that their rented properties comply with these Regulations. Responsibility for enforcement of the Regulations rests with the relevant local authority.

The Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) scheme is underpinned by the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014. Under section 41 of the 2014 Act, local authorities are required to commence the inspection process within 8 months of HAP support being provided in relation to a particular dwelling, if the dwelling was not already inspected within the previous 12 months. Local authorities carry out HAP inspections as part of their overall private rented inspections programme.

The HAP legislation provides a very structured, time bound system where serious lack of compliance exists and can result in termination of HAP payment.

Failure to comply with the minimum standards can result in penalties and prosecution. Local authorities can issue Improvement Notices and Prohibition Notices to landlords who breach the minimum standards regulations. An Improvement Notice sets out the works that the landlord must carry out to remedy a breach of the regulations.

I am committed to decreasing our reliance on the HAP scheme, and central to that is significantly scaling up our social housing supply. Under Housing for All, the Government will deliver 47,600 new build social homes in the period 2022?2026. Our clear focus is to increase the stock of social housing through new build projects delivered by local authorities and Approved Housing Bodies.

My Department publishes comprehensive programme-level statistics on a quarterly basis on social housing delivery activity in all local authorities. This data is available until the end of Quarter 2 2022 and is published on the statistics page of my Department’s website, at the following link: gov.ie/en/collection/6060e-overall-social-housing-provision/