Ann Graves (Dublin Fingal East, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context

319. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the housing supports in place for male victims of domestic violence who owned the family home, continue to pay the mortgage due to the fact children remain in the family home, and had to flee the home due to violence and whose wife was never on the mortgage. [67436/25]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Applications for social housing support are assessed by the relevant local authority, in accordance with the eligibility and need criteria set down in section 20 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009, as amended, and the associated Social Housing Assessment Regulations 2011, as amended.

A household shall be ineligible for social housing support if that household has alternative accommodation it could reasonably be expected to use to meet its housing need. However, where an applicant for social housing support owns accommodation occupied by a spouse, from whom they are formally separated or divorced, a deed of separation is sufficient to set aside this ineligibility ground. It is not necessary to await judicial separation or divorce to get a decision on social housing support in these cases.

Local authorities may provide such households with social housing support under the Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS) or the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) scheme until ownership of the family home is resolved in a formal separation or divorce settlement.

Support in these circumstances will be reviewed by the local authority at prescribed intervals and the household will not be able to transfer to other forms of social housing support while ownership of the family home remains to be determined. However, where the household ultimately qualifies for the full range of social housing supports, the length of time the household was supported under RAS or HAP will be reckonable for the purposes of determining the household’s relative priority for a transfer to local authority social housing.