In Rebuilding Ireland the housing assistance payment, HAP, was lauded as the be-all and end-all that would help to resolve the housing crisis by pushing people into private rented accommodation. Clearly the scheme is not working and one of the reasons it is not working is it is weighted in favour of landlords. Consider a situation where a sitting tenant of five years on a moderate fixed income qualifies for the payment. As a result of the spiralling cost of rent, he or she needs financial support but the landlord refuses to accept the housing assistance payment which he or she also puts in writing. In that case, the landlord has clearly broken the law, but in order for the tenant to get a hearing at the WRC, he or she has to wait at least eight months. Availing of the Residential Tenancies Board offers two options to the tenant. One is telephone mediation which can take about four weeks and with which the landlord is under no obligation to comply. The other option is availing of an adjudication process which can take up to eight weeks and is clearly weighted in favour of the landlord. What immediate protections does the Government intend to introduce in favour of the tenant?

If there is an issue with the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme, we will look at it, but there are over 32,000 HAP tenancies that are going quite well. I hear reports week-in, week-out that the scheme does not work. From what we can see, it works very well and most people are happy with it because it gives them a chance to be able to obtain rent assistance while in work. Under previous schemes, people were not able to go back to work to improve their situation. If there are individual cases which are causing difficulty, we are happy to look at them to see what we can do. In general, the HAP scheme works quite well and thousands of people are very happy with it.

The mechanisms are not in place to protect tenants.