Pauline Tully (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

No problem. I thank the Acting Chair. I want to focus initially on low-income earners because they frequently fall between two stools, as it is. I will give an example of what I mean by this. Recently I was contacted by a constituent. She, her husband and their four children have been living in a rental property for the past 11 to 12 years and paying a reasonable rent. Now, however, the landlord requires the house for his son, who is returning from abroad. The family completely understands the situation. However, they cannot find anywhere to rent in the region for a reasonable sum. They applied for social housing but were deemed not to qualify because their earnings were €43,500 per year. The threshold is only €31,500. The family's income includes the working family payment. They applied for a local authority loan but, because they already had a car loan and another loan, they were deemed to not qualify. If they had paid off those loans, the council said they might qualify for a loan of €132,000 to buy a house. It would be difficult to find a house for a family of this size for that sum. The interesting thing about this is that the working family payment was not taken into account as income in this situation. It is not fair to hold it against the family, as it were, for social housing. It is seen as income when people apply for social housing but not when they apply for a local authority loan. Could this be looked at to see if it could be changed?

As for the affordable housing scheme, I was told that, in general, a person has to be earning more than €50,000 and up to €55,000 to qualify for it. For people earning anything from the low €30,000s to the low €50,000s, there is no support. They do not qualify for social housing or any of the supports that go with it but they also do not qualify for a home loan or for the affordable housing scheme, where it exists.

The vacant property grant is very welcome, although the 13 month turnaround time is harsh on people who cannot find workers to do the work. I have come across a couple of examples of people who have bought homes which were vacant and qualified for the vacant property grant. However, in both cases, because they faced homelessness and did not have family nearby who they could stay with while they applied for the grant and moved into the home, were then deemed not to qualify for the vacant property grant. That is unfair. In each case, the property was vacant for two years or more and qualified for the scheme when they bought it. They moved in because they had nowhere else to go. Even though the houses needed a lot of work, they were liveable. They applied for the grant and were told they did not qualify.Again they were left high and dry. There was one couple with a family who were being evicted from a house in Galway. They bought a house in Cavan, had no family support around them and moved in because they had nowhere else to go. They could not afford to pay for a bed and breakfast to live in while they applied for the grant. Another person, due to marriage breakdown, bought a cheap house. The person, who also had a number of health challenges, was told he or she did not qualify for the grant any more as he or she had moved in and the house was no longer vacant. Could that be looked at? It is really unfair.

A number of people have mentioned the high level of vacancy. It is in every city, town and village throughout the country. I was contacted by someone who is on the housing list. She lives in the village of Bellananagh in Cavan, which is close to me. She sent me pictures of 22 houses that were vacant. They are not derelict but vacant. I know the resources are not there in the local authority to follow up and see who these houses belong to and if they could be sold or rented out. There needs to be some way to force people into doing something with a property if they own it and it is sitting idle when we have so many homeless people at the moment with nowhere to live, who would be willing and delighted to take on one of these houses and do it up and move in. Bellananagh is not an outlier; it is the same in every other town, village and city.