Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 1 April 2021
2. Deputy Sorca Clarke asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the number of complaints made to the WRC regarding the refusal of landlords to accept the housing assistance payment in 2019, 2020 and to date in 2021. [18093/21]
View answerThe Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) scheme is administered by the local authorities who pay landlords directly. Pat 4 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014 made legal provision for the Housing Assistance (HAP) Scheme. The provisions of the Act were commenced and extended on a phased basis by various regulations and in particular by SI No 404 of 2014 – Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014 (Commencement of Certain Provisions Order 2014. The Equal Status Acts 2000-2015 prohibits discrimination in the provision of goods and services and The Equality (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2015 inserted the “housing assistance” ground.
The following are the number of complaints relating to alleged discrimination under the HAP Scheme to end February 2021 that were submitted to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) for adjudication.
|
Number of HAP Complaints received |
2019 |
2020 |
1 Jan 2021 to 28 Feb 2021 |
|
106 |
62 |
4 |
The volume of HAP complaints must also be assessed against the total number of complaints received for adjudication before the WRC. For instance, during 2018 the WRC received 7,724 complaint applications comprising 15,451 individual complaints and during 2019 the WRC received 8,309 complaint applications comprising 20,939 individual complaints.
Full details of complaints submitted for adjudication in each year are set out in the WRC Annual Reports.
