Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are supportive of the amendment tabled by the Minister. We spoke in support of Deputy Joan Burton's amendment on Committee Stage. Those living in local authority homes that are most likely to avail of the home renovation scheme are those who intend to avail of the tenant purchase scheme and buy their home. This raises an issue because my reading of the new tenant purchase scheme, which is in place since the beginning of this year, is that the discount that applies to the market value, which is between 40% and 60%, appears to be purely based on income. If the household income is more than €30,000, the purchaser will get a discount of 40%. However, there does not appear to be recognition for work done by the tenant to the house. Under previous schemes, this would have happened. I ask the Minister or his officials to raise that issue with the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government. The reality is that local authority tenants are unlikely to be willing to invest a lot of money to upgrade their homes if, ultimately, they will not be in a position to own it. That issue needs to be teased out.

To pick up on Deputy Pearse Doherty's points, we have a good grants system in place for private homeowners, namely, the housing adaptation grant schemes for older persons and those with disabilities and the mobility grant scheme. For tenants of local authority houses who are unable to afford to upgrade their homes themselves, the amount of funding local authorities have to carry out adaptations to their own stock is disgraceful. We all know of so many cases of people with very serious and, in some cases, profound disabilities whose local authority homes need to be adapted, but the council simply does not have the funding to do it, whereas we are, quite rightly, providing grant support for private homeowners to carry out the same works. This is a real issue. It is not an issue for the Minister, but one that needs to be raised with the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government. However, I ask the Minister to comment on the interface between the tenant purchase scheme and the improvement works that people may carry out now under this scheme.

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