Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

54. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government to direct local authorities to accept social housing applications from victims of domestic violence who have fled their homes but who are ineligible if they retain joint ownership of the home occupied by their abusive partners. [11571/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Responsibility for the development and provision of services to support victims of domestic abuse rests with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and the delivery of such services is managed through the Child and Family Agency, Tusla. A housing authority may provide short-term emergency housing to persons who are forced to leave their homes because of domestic violence, without having to assess their eligibility for social housing support or include them on the authority’s housing waiting list. Such support can be provided where victims of domestic violence meet the homeless definition set out in the Housing Act 1988, which is not prescriptive and in practice will generally include victims of domestic violence. 

Where a social housing assessment is an appropriate longer-term response to a case of domestic violence, the household concerned may be determined by the relevant housing authority to be in need of social housing support where, in accordance with the Social Housing Assessment Regulations 2011, the authority considers that the household’s current accommodation is unsuitable in terms of adequate housing provision, having regard to particular household circumstances or exceptional medical or compassionate grounds. This allows a housing authority to consider a victim of domestic violence as having a housing need and to be placed on a housing list, subject to the household meeting all other eligibility criteria.

In the past there may have been difficulties for separated persons in meeting the alternative accommodation eligibility criterion for social housing support where no deed of separation existed and no determination had been made as to the future of the family home. In order to provide more flexibility to housing authorities to deal with cases where the ownership of the family home had not yet been finalised, the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 was amended in 2014 to allow authorities to provide such households with social housing support under the Rental Accommodation Scheme or the Housing Assistance Payment scheme until ownership of the family home is resolved in a formal separation or divorce settlement.