Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 17 October 2013
61. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Social Protection the extent to which in the coming year, she expects to be in a position to transfer responsibility for meeting the housing needs of those on local authority housing lists and having to rely on rent support from her Department to the Department of the Environment thereby achieving considerable savings; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43307/13]
View answerThe purpose of the rent supplement scheme is to provide short-term support to eligible people living in private rented accommodation whose means are insufficient to meet their accommodation costs and who do not have accommodation available to them from any other source. There are approximately 82,000 rent supplement recipients of which over 51,000 are in receipt for over 18 months. The Government has provided over €403 million for the scheme in 2013.
In July 2013, the Government approved the introduction of the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP). Under HAP, responsibility for recipients of rent supplement with a long-term housing need will transfer from the Department of Social Protection to housing authorities. Officials in the Department of Social Protection are working with those in the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government (DECLG), who are leading the project, to assist with the necessary legal, policy and operational matters required to progress HAP. This summer, DECLG undertook a ‘Business Processing Design’ exercise to determine the business processes required to support the implementation of HAP roll out. This exercise will assist DECLG in the drafting of the necessary legislation and feed into the development of implementation plans and the necessary IT infrastructure to support the roll-out of the new scheme in the selected test authorities.
The Department is advised that following the enactment of the relevant legislation, a HAP testing phase will be carried out in the selected local authorities in 2014 with full roll out of the scheme to follow once the test phase is complete.
Government has approved that funding will be provided to local authorities to cover the costs of HAP by way of a funding transfer from the rent supplement scheme to DECLG in so far as the expenditure relates to persons transferring from rent supplement.
