Number of HAP tenants to increase to 72,000 this year

HAP has, in recent years, come to dominate social housing provision in Ireland, and sees payments go directly to private landlords, not local authorities. File picture

The number of households in receipt of the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) social housing subsidy is set to increase by at least 10,000 this year, an Oireachtas committee has heard.

The head of the Department of Housing has told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that the figure is expected to move from about 62,000 households at the end of 2021 to somewhere in the region of 72,000 by the end of 2022.