Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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529. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if the terms for the new scheme for the purchase of existing local authority houses to replace the 1995 scheme are available; if so, the details of the terms involved; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48976/14]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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556. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government when a new tenant purchase scheme will become operational; the way the discount on the market value of the property will be calculated; the number of properties purchased under the 1995 scheme; the average discount which applied; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [49298/14]

Paudie Coffey (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 529 and 556 together.

Part 3 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014 provides for a new scheme for the tenant purchase of existing local authority houses which will replace the 1995 scheme and the once–off 2011 scheme, which closed in June 2014 and June 2013 respectively. Discounts of 3% per year of reckonable tenancy, up to a maximum discount of 30%, were available off the market value of the house under the 1995 scheme, plus a discount of €3,809 in lieu of the new house grant. The 2011 scheme offered discounts of 3% per year of reckonable tenancy, up to a maximum discount of 45%, off the market value of the house. Information is not available on the average discount rate applied to sales under the schemes. Returns from housing authorities indicate that 24,391 houses were purchased by tenants under the two schemes.

The Social Housing Strategy 2020, which was published last month, includes a commitment to introduce the new tenant purchase scheme by the second quarter of 2015. The scheme will operate along the incremental purchase model currently operating for local authority apartments and certain new local authority houses, which involve discounts for purchasers linked to household income and a discount-related charge on the property that reduces to nil over a period unless the house is resold or the purchaser fails to comply with conditions of the sale.

Where the tenant purchaser resells the property before the end of the charge period, he or she will be required to pay back to the housing authority a portion of any profits arising from the sale, thereby compensating the State for its loss on the original sale of the property and generating funds for the local authority to invest in new social housing or the refurbishment of existing housing.

Full details of the new scheme will be set out in regulations that I will make as part of the introduction of the new scheme.