A man came into my office yesterday who has been on the council's housing waiting list for more than nine years. He was offered a house with Louth County Council and later on, after filling in the assessment form, the council phoned him up refusing him the house. The council said that he was over the income limit. This man has a child and he had received a promotion only in the last few weeks. The problem is that in Louth County Council the band two income limit is €30,000. I cannot understand it. If this man had gone through the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme, there would be no means test and automatically if a house had become available he would have got it. Instead, his family took him into the family home. Are we going to stop people from going back to work and from getting promotions? What are we supposed to do in these situations? This man has been waiting for nine years for this house and he had the offer. To be fair to Louth County Council it will hold the house for a few days to see what will happen in this case. This man pays €70 for child maintenance. If this was taken into consideration for the means test he would be well under the income limit. I ask the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government please to look at this. This man has waited nearly ten years for this house. What can we do?

I thank the Deputy for the question. I cannot speak to individual cases but I am very sorry this person has been waiting so long for support. In 2018 we supported more than 27,000 families and individuals into new housing supports through the work of Rebuilding Ireland. Some 8,400 of those supports were increases to the social housing stock, with new homes built, acquired or long-term leased. This is having an important impact in reductions to the housing list, which now stands at just over 70,000 people. This is down about 20,000 since the beginning of Rebuilding Ireland. HAP is a great support if it can work but I also know the income eligibility bands for local authorities have not increased since 2011. When the review was done in 2011 an additional amount of money was put in for the coming period. A review is happening currently by the Housing Agency and when we have the results of the income eligibility review it will then be rolled out across the State.