Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Consideration is being given to whether 5,000 homes could be brought onto the market if the 80% requirement were removed. The additional issue that must be borne in mind is whether a person whose mother or father is in a nursing home wants the family house, with all of its private belongings and possessions, to be rented out to someone else. We need to be careful about this sensitive aspect of the matter as well. Many people believe that going into a nursing home is a temporary arrangement and that they will get home again sometime. Selling the home is traumatic in those circumstances. We are certainly not in a position to put anything in place to incentivise or encourage. We have to respect that the family takes supremacy. It is still the individual's home and he or she is entitled to have his or her home. We are looking at arrangements that can be put in place in scenarios in which it is accepted that the person who has gone into a nursing home is not going to return home and his or her family is anxious to rent the house to limit the exposure of that family to the requirement to give 80% of the rental income to the State. That is being considered by the Departments of Finance, Health and Housing, Planning and Local Government.