Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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302. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if the tenant purchase scheme will be reviewed as a matter of urgency (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3030/23]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Tenant (Incremental) Purchase Scheme provides for the purchase by eligible tenants, or joint tenants, of local authority homes available for sale under the scheme.

The scheme was amended in February 2022 to include a reduction in the minimum reckonable income required to be eligible under the scheme from €15,000 to €12,500. This ensured older tenants, whose only income might be the contributory or non-contributory State pension, could qualify to buy their homes if they had the financial means to do so. At the same, the time an applicant had to be in receipt of social housing supports to qualify under the scheme was also revised, increasing from one to ten years.

These changes strike an appropriate balance between facilitating home ownership and allowing tenants to purchase their homes on one hand, and ensuring, at a time of unprecedented demand, that an adequate supply of social housing stock remained available to local authorities on the other.

Further changes to the scheme are currently being examined as part of the work on the broader social housing reform agenda.