Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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134. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the terms of refusal and the options available to a person who has been refused entry onto the Meath County Council social housing list due to not being able to provide evidence from a mortgage company of having voluntarily surrendered the property which the person previously occupied; if this was the only option available to the person; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9282/16]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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For a household to qualify for social housing support, a housing authority must carry out an assessment to establish whether the household is in need of housing and meets certain eligibility criteria, including in respect of income limits. As part of a concerted effort to deal with the issue of mortgage arrears, the Social Housing Assessment Regulations were amended in 2011 to provide that a household may be determined to be in need of housing if it has a mortgage that is deemed to be unsustainable under the Mortgage Arrears Resolution Process.

Qualification under this criterion is not dependent on the making of a possession order. Guidance on this issue was issued by the Housing Agency in June 2011 and advised housing authorities that, upon receipt of written confirmation from the lender that a household’s mortgage has been deemed unsustainable, an authority may consider the household to have a housing need, even though the household may, at that time, remain the legal owner(s) of the dwelling concerned.