asked the Minister for the Environment if he will consider making an order deleting the clause in relation to fee simple in the 1966 Housing Act where a tenant must have purchased his or her house for 25 years before they can freely dispose of it.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Housing Act, 1966.
7.
I do not propose to make such an order.
The only reason I put down this question was that tenants who have purchased houses under that Act and who have to dispose of them find difficulty if they have to provide a building society loan as, because of that clause, a building society is not prepared to fund the loan.
There are other reasons as to why the clause is there. As the Deputy knows, the housing authority have the power to waive that clause in certain circumstances. I would have thought that if a difficulty arose from time to time it might be best met in that way rather than by varying the overall provision.
Would the Minister agree that there are inconsistencies in many of these house purchase schemes? Some of these houses were purchased on an annuity basis and if the annuity is paid off the former tenant puarchaser acquires full rights to transfer. Therefore, there does seem to be variations between the different authorities. Would the Minister not agree that there should be uniformity throughout the system?
There is uniformity in some schemes but in relation to older dwellings the conditions may differ. The only way to secure uniformity would be to recast the present scheme to bring it into line with previous schemes. It would be impossible to recast the previous schemes to bring them into line with the existing one. I am not sure if the Deputy on reflection would advocate that course.
If a tenant purchaser buys the house, should his position be regarded all that differently from a purchaser who buys his house through a building society or in any other way? He is paying the full market value. After a relatively short number of years goes by, is there any particular advantage to anybody in putting a tie on his rights to alienate, sell or remortgage the house? Is there any reason why he should be disadvantaged in that way simply because he bought it from a county council of corporation?
The House will be aware of the extremely high cost to the State in the provision of local authority housing. Whilst the Deputy suggests that the purchaser buys a house at market value it is only in the recent scheme, introduced in the last few months by me, that the purchaser has the option to choose either the market value or a discount price based on the cost of the house less allowances for each year of tenancy and allowances equivalent to the new house grants. Because the house was provided as part of the local authority stock and the tenant received his tenancy through that local authority system it is felt to be incumbent upon the State to ensure that the house continues to be used for housing purposes, that that tenant has adequate housing and intends to live in the house and on becoming a tenant purchaser he would not immediately thereafter sell his interest in the house to some other person, thereby bringing about the result that having sold the house he would once again become an applicant for local authority housing. As I said, there is a provision which allows the local authority to waive this particular provision in individual cases. It is my understanding that where a case is made to the local authority as to why this should be done their response from a purchaser's point of view is generally satisfactory.
I have allowed considerable latitude on this question.