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

23. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if he has had any discussion with the Minister for Social Protection on the inclusion of FIS as a reckonable payment for local authority rent; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36048/16]

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, such as Family Income Supplement (FIS), for the purposes of calculating rents are matters for each individual local authority in accordance with their own rent scheme. Consequently, I have not had any discussions to date with the Minister for Social Protection on the matter.

Section 31 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 allows the Minister to make regulations in respect of various matters to be included in a rent scheme, including the sources of household income that may be assessed for the purpose of determining rent levels. Considerable work has been carried out by my Department in developing a draft framework for a harmonisation of the approach to be taken by local authorities in regard to various aspects of rent schemes. This includes providing for a common set of income disregards to be applied by all housing authorities in determining a household’s assessable income for rent calculation purposes. These proposals are now being examined further in the light of the broader commitment given in the Rebuilding Ireland Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, to review the disparate systems of differential rents for social housing in place across local authorities to ensure that housing supports are fair and sustainable, prioritise those on lowest incomes and avoid creating social welfare traps that may prevent people from either returning to work or to the private housing market.

As part of this review process, which I expect to be completed before the end of Quarter 2 2017, my Department will directly engage with key stakeholders, including other relevant Government Departments such as the Department of Social Protection, to seek their views on particular aspects of the current differential rents schemes in place across the country.