Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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704. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the position regarding the possible plans to change the criteria for the buying out of houses for voluntary housing groups (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [46878/13]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 2009, introduced a new approach to the sale of social housing whereby social housing tenants, including tenants of approved housing bodies, could acquire new local authority houses and existing apartments under the Incremental Purchase Scheme (IPS). The details of this scheme are avail able on my Department’s website, . There is no provision at present for the purchase of individual houses by tenants of approved housing bodies. My Department has been in consultation with the approved housing body sector regarding the development of an enabling regulatory framework to support the expanded role for the sector as envisaged in the Government’s 2011 Housing Policy Statement . In July 2013 I published Building for the Future, a Voluntary Regulation Code for Approved Housing Bodies in Ireland which has been developed by my Department to provide a framework within which statutory regulation of the AHB sector will be pursued.

In conjunction with the development of this framework my Department will examine a range of issues around the long-term financing of the sector. One issue to be considered is h ow to best use the equity accrued in the approved housing body stock to leverage additional new supply ; the sale of existing stock to tenants is one of a range of options in this regard.