As a former Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, I do not suppose the Tánaiste will be surprised that I and others are very critical of the long-term use of the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme. It is a system that artificially inflates the market and is the single biggest transfer of public funds to private landlords in the history of the State.

One aspect of this system that has worsened considerably in recent months is the processing times. The delay in processing applications now averages nine weeks. I will use Kildare County Council as an example. It is now processing applications made in August. This means that anyone who had found accommodation has to come up with the deposit, the one month's rent in advance, the October rent and now the November rent is due. If that was totalled up for most parts of the country, it would amount to between €6,000 and €8,000. HAP is paid to people who cannot pay the rents so it does not take a genius to figure out that this is a real problem and people are borrowing money, if they can do that. The tenant and landlord are effectively in limbo. If someone fails to pay the rent after securing a tenancy, the landlord has the right to issue a 14 day notice to pay the rent or consider the tenancy terminated. I have spoken to genuine landlords and letting agents who do not want to be issuing notices to quit but cannot forgo two or three months of rent with little chance of its being backdated. This is a very serious issue. Fair is fair. One letting agent told me that if he advertised a property in Kildare or west Dublin, he would expect to receive between 150 and 160 emails within 24 hours. Of those, 70% would potentially be HAP tenants. The people who are not HAP tenants have a better chance of getting the accommodation.

There is a very real legal implication where there is a clear failure of Government policy. Once people are deemed eligible for HAP, they are deemed to have had their housing need met and are removed from the social housing waiting list. In the meantime, if their application is not processed in a timely fashion and their tenancy is legally terminated as a result, they are effectively homeless and have lost their place on the housing waiting list. Is the Tánaiste aware that this significant issue will add to the number of people becoming homeless? This is the origin of some of that homelessness and it has to be addressed urgently. What is the Government doing or going to do about this?

I would like to talk to the Deputy in a bit more detail about some of the problems she has just outlined. I am very familiar with HAP tenancies. I was a Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government when we saw a shift away from rent allowance towards HAP because it provided more security of tenure for tenants and also more security and consistency for landlords as they were dealing with local authorities for payments rather than directly with tenants. It also had more flexibility for tenants in terms of the support that local authorities could give. Last year, 17,926 people moved into HAP. It is a big part of social housing supports right now. We will see an extra 10,000 social housing units coming into the stock of social housing this year and over time we will see less reliance on the private rental market to accommodate people who cannot afford to find accommodation themselves and more reliance on providing them directly with social housing. As we build up our social housing stock, we will continue to rely on the private rental market. We have to try to implement a model that gives as much certainty to tenants as possible and as much consistency as possible to landlords too. That is what HAP attempts to do and does it reasonably well.

If there are delays taking place or there are problems in HAP that create vulnerabilities, in particular for tenants, I would be interested in hearing about them. The Government is not stuck to one approach. We are constantly adapting and amending and trying to improve social housing provision through all the different ways we do that. If there are details of problems in County Kildare, the Deputy can feed them through to me if she wants and I will certainly talk to the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and we will try to address it, if there is a genuine concern that needs a policy response.

I used Kildare as an example. The issue is not unique to Kildare and the Tánaiste should please pay attention to that point. I appreciate that things will be done and I hope they are done to a greater extent. Maybe the election will intervene to accelerate that because it is a huge issue. When HAP was introduced the resources were allocated to an agency in Limerick that would pay the amount to the person approved. Approval happens at local authority level and that is where the delay is. Either there are not enough resources or they are not being allocated to this. I am seeing people evicted and taken off the housing list who become homeless. I am not the only one. I do not expect that I am some sort of a magnet for these cases. I expect that other Deputies are seeing them too, including Deputies in the Tánaiste's party.

I do not mind saying that I have been somewhat of a magnet for people to come and talk about social housing concerns and housing concerns generally because I was a Minister in that Department. I do not mind that because we are trying to help families, not expose them to the dangers and vulnerabilities of homelessness. We have an overreliance at the moment on the private rental sector for social housing solutions but that reliance is shrinking each year as we build up our social housing stock, which will increase by more than 10,000 this year and probably closer to 12,000 next year. We are seeing dramatic investment. Our housing budget for next year is, I believe, €2.63 billion. It has increased dramatically over the past four or five years because housing is needed and is a priority for Government. If we are starting with a stock that is too small, we have to increase that stock and provide viable, safe solutions for people in the meantime.

That is where HAP has been a good improvement on rent allowance. However, this does not mean that it is perfect. If there are problems with individual local authorities in terms of processing times, as well as the time it takes to make decisions and approvals, I would like to hear about them and we will try and respond as best we can.