Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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131. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if pensioners with a social protection income of more than €22,000 per annum are eligible to purchase a house under the tenant incremental purchase scheme 2016; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31440/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Tenant (Incremental) Purchase Scheme came in to operation on 1 January 2016 and offers eligible local authority tenants the opportunity to buy their homes. To be eligible, tenants must meet certain criteria, including having a minimum reckonable income of €15,000 per annum and having been in receipt of social housing support for at least 1 year. The minimum reckonable income for eligibility under the Scheme is determined by the relevant housing authority in accordance with the detailed provisions of the Ministerial Direction issued under Sections 24(3) and (4) of the 2014 Act. In the determination of the minimum reckonable income, housing authorities can include income from a number of different sources and classes, such as from employment, private pensions, maintenance payments and certain social welfare payments, including pensions, where the social welfare payment is secondary to employment income. In this case, a pensioner with a social welfare pension income of over €22,000 a year would not be eligible to purchase a house under this Scheme as their primary source of income is from a social welfare payment.

In order to ensure the sustainability of the scheme, it is essential that an applicant’s income is of a long-term and sustainable nature. This is necessary to ensure that the tenant purchasing the house is in a financial position, as the owner, to maintain and insure the property for the duration of the charged period, in compliance with the conditions of the order transferring the ownership of, and responsibility for, the house from the local authority to the tenant.

In line with the commitment in the Programme for a Partnership Government and reaffirmed in Rebuilding Ireland - Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, it is intended that a review of the Scheme will be undertaken in January 2017 following the first 12 months of operation and any changes to the terms and conditions of the scheme which are considered necessary based on the evidence gathered at that stage will be brought forward.