Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)
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233. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government when the new local authority house purchase scheme is likely to be introduced; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34884/14]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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Part 3 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014 provides for a new scheme for the tenant purchase of existing local authority houses. This scheme will replace the 1995 and 2011 tenant purchase schemes under section 90 of the Housing Act 1966, which closed in June 2014 and June 2013, respectively.

The new scheme will be open to local authority tenants in receipt of social housing support, for a prescribed period of at least one year, who have not previously purchased a house under a tenant purchase scheme and who have an annual income equal to or greater than a prescribed amount.

The scheme will operate along the incremental purchase model currently being applied in purchase schemes for local authority apartments and new local authority houses under the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009, which involve discounts for purchasers linked to household income and a discount-related charge on the property that reduces over a period unless the house is resold or the purchaser fails to comply with conditions of the sale.

I intend to make the necessary statutory instruments later this year to enable the new scheme to come into operation.