Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 6 July 2023
40. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the number of houses purchased by local authority tenants each year since 2016 under the tenant purchase incremental scheme 2016; whether he intends amending the scheme further to encourage more tenants to buy their homes; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32074/23]
View answerThe Tenant (Incremental) Purchase Scheme provides for the purchase by eligible tenants, or joint tenants, of local authority homes available for sale under the scheme.
The number of local authority houses purchased by tenants for the period 2016 to 2022 is outlined below:
|
Year |
Houses Purchased |
|
2016 |
9 |
|
2017 |
325 |
|
2018 |
404 |
|
2019 |
374 |
|
2020 |
247 |
|
2021 |
283 |
|
2022 |
350 |
A breakdown of the above sales by local authority area may be found on my Department’s website at the following link: www.gov.ie/en/collection/0906a-other-local-authority-housing-scheme-statistics/#sale-of-local-authority-houses
Both the Programme for Government: Our Shared Future and Housing for All, commit to maintaining the right of social housing tenants to purchase their home, subject to a number of reforms. The scheme was amended in February 2022 to include a reduction in the minimum reckonable income required to be eligible under the scheme from €15,000 to €12,500. This ensured older tenants, whose only income might be the contributory or non-contributory State pension, could qualify to buy their homes if they had the financial means to do so. The time tenants had to be in receipt of social housing supports to qualify under the scheme was also revised, increasing from one to ten years.
These changes were introduced to strike an appropriate balance between increasing the scope for those in receipt of long-term housing support to purchase their local authority home, and ensuring the continued sustainability of the Scheme by not unduly diminishing local authority housing stock.
Schemes such as these are regularly reviewed to ensure that they are effective and sustainable. To that end, further changes to the scheme are currently being considered as part of my Department's work on the broader social housing reform agenda.
