Note to new housing minister: You’d want to bring your own calculator

THE number of new people getting the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) over the past three years is far fewer than Rebuilding Ireland figures claim, a housing expert has said.

Architect Mel Reynolds said whoever the new housing minister is they should ‘bring their own calculator’ to the housing department.

The State programme, designed to get more people into homes, appears to be counting tenants who are already in the scheme along with new additions, and presenting them all together as new recipients of HAP, Mr Reynolds says.

Rebuilding Ireland’s figures indicate 48,695 new households were added to the HAP scheme in 2017, 2018 and the first three quarters of 2019 – the latest available figures.

However, Mr Reynolds says Rebuilding Ireland appears to have rolled existing HAP tenancies that

‘It makes it hard to see what is actually going on’

had been renewed, along with existing HAP recipients who have moved house, into this figure so some households are double counted.

He says his analysis of figures for 2017 to the third quarter of 2019 presented by outgoing housing minister Eoghan Murphy in the Dáil shows that in fact only 32,141 households are ‘actively’ getting HAP at the end of that period – 16,554 fewer than the Rebuilding Ireland figures suggest.

Mr Reynolds is calling for the Central Statistics Office to take over the task of compiling the statistics. ‘Assessments of current costs, future budgets and policy depend on analysis based on accurate data,’ he told the MoS. ‘The bigger the number of tenancies you have, the bigger the number of renewals and the bigger the discrepancy as you go along, year on year.’

According to the latest figures from Rebuilding Ireland, there are 50,381 households in receipt of HAP by the end of 2019’s third quarter at a cost of almost €1billion to date, and Rebuilding Ireland aims to add another 13,000 HAP recipients this year.

But Mr Reynolds says that based on an average over 2019 to date, the total projected annual figure will be around 9,250. ‘It will be interesting to see what they shortly publish. Any new minister would want to bring in his own calculator into the department.

‘It makes it very hard to assess policy and see what’s actually going on. It’s a massive level of inflation and they’ve never come back to explain the difference between the figures.’

Mr Reynolds called for the CSO to take over the performance analysis of housing provisions in Ireland to ensure accuracy.

‘Social housing provision is at much lower levels than suggested. Builds should be distinct from new acquisitions; short-term vacant units should not be included as additional new homes and accurate net totals for HAP tenancies should be provided.’

Asked to explain the discrepancies in figures, a spokesman for the Department of Housing said: ‘Reporting on HAP is on a per tenancy basis. These figures would include as a new tenancy, a case where a household being supported by HAP has their existing tenancy end and they get HAP support for a tenancy in a different property. Renewals of HAP tenancies in an existing property would not count as a new tenancy.’

Launched under former housing minister Simon Coveney, Rebuilding Ireland aims to increase the supply of private and social housing and make better use of existing housing stock, along with improved supports for people renting