Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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135. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of mortgage to rent applications through approved housing bodies, local authorities and Home for Life to date in 2022. [46259/22]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Mortgage to Rent (MTR) scheme was introduced in 2012 for borrowers of commercial lending institutions and is targeted at those households in mortgage arrears who have had their mortgage position deemed unsustainable by their lender under the Mortgage Arrears Resolution Process (MARP), who agree to the voluntary surrender of their home and who have very limited options, if any, to meet their long-term housing needs themselves. In addition, the household must be deemed eligible for social housing support. The concept of the scheme is that a household with an unsustainable mortgage goes from being a homeowner to being a social housing tenant.  

Under the MTR scheme, the borrower surrenders their property to their lender and it will be then sold to an MTR provider who can be either an Approved Housing Body (AHB) or since 2018 a private company, Home for Life Ltd. The AHB or local authority (in the case where the property is sold to a private company) becomes the landlord and the borrower remains in the property as a tenant paying a differential rent to the landlord based on his or her income.  

To the end of June 2022, a total of 1,905 households with unsustainable private mortgages have completed the MTR process and 635 cases are being actively progressed. A total of 5,602 individuals are benefitting from the scheme, which comprises of 3,079 adults and 2,523 children.

The following table outlines the number of active, completed, ineligible and terminated cases assigned to AHBs and Home for Life from January 2022 to end Q2 2022. Those that are unassigned are also provided.

The Housing Agency publishes, on a quarterly basis, detailed statistical information on the operation of the MTR scheme. This information is available on the Housing Agency's website at the following link: www.housingagency.ie/housing-information/mortgage-rent-statistics 

A MTR scheme was also introduced for local authority borrowers which is called Local Authority Mortgage to Rent (LAMTR) and has been in place nationally since 2014. Under the scheme, a local authority can acquire ownership of properties with unsustainable local authority mortgages, thus enabling the household to remain in their home as social housing tenants. Information in relation to the Local Authority MTR scheme from its inception in 2013 to end 2021, broken down by local authority area, is available on my Department's website under the heading Local Authority Mortgage to Rent at the link below. During that period, a total of 552 households had benefited from the scheme. 

www.gov.ie/en/collection/42d2f-local-authority-loan-activity/#local-authority-mortgage-to-rent-scheme (Refer to the section "Local Authority Mortgage to Rent scheme")