LIMERICK City and County Council will deal with more than €400 million worth of Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) transactions in 2018 in its first year full of operation as national customer contact for all local authorities in Ireland.
The Housing Assistance Payments Shared Services Centre (HAP SSC) in the Granary is run by Limerick City and County Council on behalf of the 31 local authorities across the country along with the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive.
HAP Shared Services Centre is the national customer contact and financial transactional Shared Service for HAP. The Limerick local authority operates the shared service centre on behalf of all 31 local authorities and the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive, following a competitive bidding process in 2016.
Prior to that, HAP was run as a pilot project before going national on 01 March 2017.
Director of the HAP Shared Services Centre, Eoghan Prendergast this week described the Housing Assistance Payment scheme as one of the key elements of the government’s policy on social housing,
“We are proud to be running this national service.
“We expect to process more than €400 million worth of transactions this year, in what is the largest social housing rent support programme in the Government’s Rebuilding Ireland: Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness,” he said.
Since its inception in 2014, the number of financial transactions managed has risen from just over €600,000 in 2014 to 31,228 active HAP tenancies amounting to over €230 million last year. That figure is expected to rise to around €400 million this year and is on course to reach its target of 84,000 tenancies and a financial turnover of just under €1 billion per annum by 2021.
“We are constantly growing and hoping to use technology to help us provide an even better service to the public and other stakeholders. We currently employ 55 people but this will rise in line with the continuing growth of HAP,” Mr Prendergast explained.
The HAP SSC located to The Granary in October 2015, and now occupies two floors of the 230-year-old building.
by Alan Jacques
alan@limerickpost.ie
