Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 21 March 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government
Tenant In Situ Process: Discussion
Mr. Coil?n O'Reilly:
On the questions directed to me, if a family was in a three-bed and had a two-bed need, we would be flexible and have been in the past. As we said, we do everything to keep a family in a home and keep them from coming into homelessness. On the valuation, my understanding is that it would be open market value. I do not know what an estate agent may say to a landlord but from our perspective it is the open market value. We have to be careful about chasing and getting into negotiations. If someone can come back and say that the house down the road that is the exact same sold for €10,000 more then we are more than happy to look at that but we are not into getting into negotiations and we are not allowing landlords to use the fact that there is a tenant in situ as a negotiation tool.