Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We all aspire to own our own homes at some point in our lives. It is something that is ingrained in our culture and something we all work towards achieving. It is considered a very important goal and milestone in one's life. It is my belief, and one shared by many citizens, that it is incumbent on our State to assist our citizens to have their own home and not to put obstacles in their way. The current legislative position with regard to the tenant purchase scheme does exactly that; it erects a barrier to people owning their own home for no apparent good reason. It blocks tenants who acquired homes under Part V schemes from accessing the tenant purchase scheme which is a clear discrimination against lower income households. The reason we are being offered as to why Part V homes were excluded in the first place is that it is to ensure that all residential communities remain mixed tenure developments. I do not buy into that reason; it is not as if we will end up with all mono-tenure developments. It will just not happen. Even if it was a genuine reason, it is simply not a good enough reason to expressly exclude or block certain tenants from owning their own home, given the importance of owning one's home to an individual, their families and communities. We have to strike a balance between our desire to maintain mixed tenure developments, which is understandable and desirable, and people's need for their own home. The reality is that many of these tenants and people have been living in these homes for many years. It also goes a long way towards building sustainable communities by offering people in Part V homes the opportunity to purchase that home if they wish. It is manifestly unfair to limit the social mobility of any person or family motivated by our desire to ensure they remain in social homes because we think it looks better. Is that not a very easy thing for us to say when we are not in that position? If people want to aspire to own their own home, we should not be preventing it. This Bill seeks to rectify that problem by amending the primary legislation to allow local authority homes or local authority tenants in Part V homes the opportunity to purchase that home.

I hope to see cross-party support for this Bill. This change is also very positive for our local authorities and far from depleting the housing stock, which has been suggested, it would have the opposite effect because it would enable the local authority to replenish its housing stock by giving it additional resources in terms of finances. It would release equity from those homes and it would also release the local authority from the cost and financial burden of maintaining those homes. In reality, those homes are not really in the social housing stock because many of these tenants stay there for very long periods of time ranging from ten to 40 years.

There are only positive aspects to this Bill. It is a win for local authorities, citizens and tenants. It is important to note that Fianna Fáil highlighted this deficiency when the scheme was first up and running. We are now trying to fix that problem which affects thousands of potential buyers across our country.

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