John Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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23. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government his plans to introduce a new tenant purchase scheme in order to enable tenants to purchase their homes from the local authority; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15556/15]

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 along incremental purchase lines. The Government’s Social Housing Strategy 2020includes a commitment to make the Regulations necessary for its introduction, which will set out the full details of the new scheme, in the second quarter of 2015.

The scheme will operate along the lines of the incremental purchase model currently operating for local authority apartments and certain new local authority houses, which involves discounts for purchasers linked to household income. The discount will be applied to the purchase price of the house to be determined by the local authority in accordance with the method to be prescribed in Regulations. I intend to relate the purchase price of the house to its market value with replacement costs also being taken into account.

Full details of the scheme, including the income related discounts available to tenant purchasers, will be set out in Regulations that I will make in advance of its introduction.