asked the Minister for the Environment if he will instruct all local authorities to make the terms of the Low Rise Mortgage Schemes available to applicants who vacate a local authority house under the terms of the scheme of an authority other than the one to which they are applying for facilities.

The terms of the Low Rise Mortgage Scheme, as notified to housing authorities, provide that where a person surrenders a local authority dwelling and seeks a loan under the scheme to erect or purchase a dwelling in an administrative area other than that in which the surrendered dwelling is situated, either local authority may make the loan. It is however a matter for each local authority concerned to decide whether to operate the scheme and whether to make it available to applicants either surrendering or seeking to purchase a house in an administrative area other than their own.

Surely the Minister should instruct all local authorities to grant this concession to people under the low rise mortgage scheme. If some county councils adopt this scheme and others do not there will be utter confusion.

It is a matter for each local authority to decide whether to operate the scheme or not. This is the way the scheme was introduced.

Surely the Minister should give a clear direction to each county council to operate the scheme.

As far as I am aware it has not proved a particularly attractive scheme to date.

I have been informed to the contrary. It is and has been a very popular scheme and more and more will avail of it in future.