Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

259. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he is aware that Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council is assessing payments under the disability allowance scheme and the family income supplement scheme for rent purposes; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19582/16]

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

The making and amending of rent schemes is the responsibility of local authorities as an integral part of their housing management functions, subject to broad principles laid down by my Department in Circular letter HRT 3/2002 of 6 March 2002. It is a matter for local authorities, when assessing individual households, to consider whether rents payable are in accordance with the authority’s rent scheme. Therefore, decisions on whether or not to disregard either a proportion of income or particular sources of income for the purposes of calculating rents are matters for each individual local authority to consider in accordance with their own rent scheme.

Section 31 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009, not yet commenced, provides for the introduction of a national differential rents framework that will harmonise local authority rent levels, while retaining some discretion for individual authorities to set rents in their own areas. My Department is currently refining its proposals for such a framework, which will include a standard method of calculation of income for the purpose of the setting of rent.