Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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229. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if child maintenance will be disregarded from the housing assistance payment and differential rent scheme assessment operated by local authorities, following the announcement from Government that child maintenance will be excluded from all social welfare means tests; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27658/24]

Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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241. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government whether child maintenance will be disregarded from the housing assistance payment and differential rent scheme assessment operated by local authorities, following the announcement that child maintenance will be excluded from all social welfare means tests; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27072/24]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 229 and 241 together.

Local authorities set and collect rents on their dwellings in accordance with section 58 of the Housing Act 1966. Tenants in the HAP scheme are required to pay a weekly rental contribution to the relevant local authority in line with the local authority’s differential rent scheme. The making or amending of such rent schemes is generally a matter for local authorities within broad principles set out by my Department including that rent levels should be based on income and reflect tenants’ ability to pay.

Local discretion and flexibility are inherent in the devolved administration of rent schemes and different approaches are taken to rent setting across local authorities. Accordingly, decisions regarding the sources of income included and disregarded for rent assessment purposes, including child maintenance, are matters for individual local authorities.

Francis Noel Duffy (Dublin South West, Green Party)
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230. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of tenants under the mortgage-to-rent scheme who have bought back their homes from approved housing bodies. [26764/24]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Mortgage to Rent (MTR) scheme is targeted at those households in acute mortgage arrears who have had their mortgage position deemed unsustainable by their lender under the Mortgage Arrears Resolution Process (MARP), and who have very limited options, if any, to meet their long-term housing needs.

To date, my Department is aware of 11 properties which have progressed, or are progressing through, the buy-back process within the MTR scheme. It is not anticipated that there will be significant numbers availing of the buy back option, because the MTR scheme is targeted at those borrowers with little or no prospect of a significant change in their financial circumstances and who have previously fallen into a level of mortgage arrears deemed unsustainable by their lender.

The two buyback options available for MTR properties are set out in full in the document 'A Guide to the Mortgage to Rent Scheme' which is available at the following link : .