Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to discuss the need for the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government to amend the terms of qualification for the new tenant purchase scheme so that people on social welfare are not excluded. It has been over two years since a tenant purchase scheme was brought back to local authorities to enable tenants to purchase their homes. I am very disappointed in this.

How can people apply? There are six conditions, but three are very serious and need to be addressed urgently. One must have an annual income of at least €15,000 and must not have bought a house under an earlier tenant purchase scheme, but there are special circumstances which should be addressed in the case of this latter condition. The last condition is that a tenant must have paid his or her water charges. I must express my disappointment at the fact that tenants on long-term social welfare are now excluded and not eligible to purchase their houses. Old age pensioners who have worked all their lives and received their redundancy payments are being told by the local authority that they cannot purchase their houses under the new tenant purchase scheme for 2016.

I know of a family which came into money and went to the local authority seeking to buy their house but were told they could not do so. If somebody wins money, is left money or gets redundancy, he or she cannot purchase the house, and that is absolutely unfair. The exclusion of Part V properties from the scheme may discriminate against tenants allocated such dwellings, and this is discrimination against people on social welfare who want to buy their houses. The provision in Circular 44/2015, which excludes local authorities from completing the sale of properties to tenants with outstanding water charges, is also unfair.

I ask the Minister to look at the new tenant purchase scheme. It has been two and a half years since there was a tenant purchase scheme in any local authority, and now this scheme has come in, but it takes us backwards instead of forwards. I welcome the scheme, but the three issues I have raised need to be urgently examined and changed.