Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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809. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government when an amended mortgage to rent scheme will become operational; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39912/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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The Review of the Mortgage to Rent (MTR) Scheme, published on 8 February 2017, introduced a range of amendments to the eligibility criteria and administration of the MTR scheme in order for it to work better for borrowers.  My Department and the Housing Agency are working with all stakeholders to ensure that the actions set out in the Review are being effectively implemented to benefit a greater number of households.  

The Review also concluded that the current financial model of the MTR scheme may not, in its current configuration, be capable of delivering the scale of successful cases that could benefit from the scheme over time.  In order to test the operability of alternative funding models for the scheme, the Housing Agency has been working with a number of financial entities who have expressed an interest in working with the MTR scheme to progress a number of alternative long-term lease arrangements.  In advance of these pilots and to establish the operability of an alternative financing approach, a targeted market testing exercise has been undertaken by the National Development Finance Agency (NDFA), to test the suitability of the proposed enhanced leasing arrangement to ascertain if they would be viable for a MTR cohort taking account of the necessity to provide a long-term stable solution for eligible households. 

The responses to the market testing exercise have been reviewed by the Housing Agency and my Department and the next step is to issue a formal call for Expressions of Interest from bodies interested in pursuing pilot operating models.  Once the Expressions of Interest process is concluded, the Housing Agency will make recommendations to my Department as to the make-up of the pilots, which can then be initiated. The drafting of the content of the Expressions of Interest Request is underway and is expected to issue in the coming weeks.