Tenant purchase scheme
Deputy Healy-Rae asked when the tenant purchase scheme would be changed to allow more local authority tenants to buy their homes. The Taoiseach said he would ask the Housing Minister to reply, but warned that selling more social housing while trying to expand stock would be problematic.
Following on from Sinn Féin's motion last night, when will the Government change the tenant purchase scheme to allow the 80% of people who are local authority tenants and who wish to purchase their homes the chance to so do? At the moment, anybody on an unemployment payment, a pension or who is not working is debarred from availing of the present tenant purchase scheme. When is it going to be changed?
Comment on this
I will have to ask the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, to provide a reply to the Deputy on the specifics. He must, however, bear in mind that what we are trying to do at the moment is increase our social housing stock. A huge amount of social housing stock was sold off and there are consequences as a result. It is not the cause of the housing crisis by any means but we need to be careful that we are not on the one hand building new social housing and on the other hand selling off the social housing that we have. Surely that is not a sensible policy.
Comment on this
It is privatisation-----
Comment on this
They are entitled to own their own home if they want to.