Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent)
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303. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if local authorities have discretionary powers to waive social housing income limits where the applicant for social housing is less than €10 over the income limit; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11251/23]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Equitable and consistent treatment of all applicants requires an objective framework and conditions for effectively and fairly assessing eligibility for social housing. While flexibility allows for some subjective reasoning in atypical cases, it also increases the risk of unfair and inconsistent treatment between applicants.

Accordingly, local authorities are statutorily prohibited from exceeding the relevant social housing thresholds. That said, they have scope when assessing an applicant's income eligibility to disregard once-off, temporary or short-term income and which is outside the regular pattern of a person’s annual income.

My Department has increased the baseline social housing income thresholds by €5,000 for all local authorities with effect from 1 January 2023. The thresholds increased to €40,000, €35,000 and €30,000 for bands 1, 2 and 3 respectively. These changes will bring an estimated 16,000 additional households into the social housing eligibility net.

Moreover, my Department is currently scoping options for a new social housing income eligibility model. Among other things, this work is considering how best to mitigate inequities between recipient and non-recipient households, including measures to avoid cliff-edge thresholds. I expect proposals for a new model to be submitted for my consideration before the end of Q1 2023.