Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

1060. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if attempts have been made to change the law, whereby the perpetrator of domestic violence is evicted from the local authority home, as is the legal case in Austria, thus facilitating the victim in remaining within the family home. [21821/15]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The provisions of the Domestic Violence Act 1996, as amended, relating to safety, barring and protection orders etc , apply to local authority dwellings, as well as to private sector dwellings. Where a local authority tenant who has engaged in domestic violence subsequently ceases, for whatever reason, to reside in the family home, the authority may let the dwelling to one of the other residents, thus enabling the remaining household members to continue living there. However, there are no proposals to amend housing legislation to provide that domestic violence is a ground for repossession of a local authority dwelling or exclusion of a perpetrator of domestic violence from such a dwelling.

Where a person who has left the family home due to domestic violence presents to a housing authority as homeless, the authority may arrange for him or her to be placed in temporary emergency accommodation without having to be placed on the housing waiting list. In the longer-term, provided the other eligibility criteria for social housing support are met, the housing authority may enter the person and other family members on the housing list on the basis that their current accommodation is unsuitable, having regard to particular household circumstances or on exceptional medical or compassionate grounds.