Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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185. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if all pre-2011 RAS tenants are eligible to remain on their local authorities housing lists and have access to allocations from the primary housing list or choice based letting systems. [38362/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Housing Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2009 gives legislative recognition to rental accommodation availability agreements as a form of social housing support. Consequently, since 1 April 2011, RAS tenants are now considered to be in receipt of social housing support and should not generally remain on housing waiting lists for new applicants for social housing. In recognition that RAS tenants may have had reasonable expectations in regard to retaining access to traditional local authority rented accommodation, guidance issued by the Housing Agency in 2011 recommended that there should be a special transfer pathway for pre- 2011 RAS tenants to other forms of social housing support. The arrangement effectively allows these households to be designated as a ‘transfer’ applicant and to maintain their position for allocation as they had on the main waiting list.

Where a vacant property arises, it is a matter for individual housing authorities, in accordance with their allocation schemes, to determine whether the allocation is made to a household on the main waiting list, or to a transfer applicant, such as a household from RAS, and the method of such allocation. It is open to housing authorities to specify in their allocation schemes the proportion of allocations which will be reserved for transfers, and within this, how many may be reserved for households seeking transfers to other forms of social housing support.