2026-06-18

Will the Government consider amending the incremental tenant purchase scheme 2016 to allow houses acquired under Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000 to be made eligible for purchase under this scheme? I want to highlight today the unfairness for some tenants with the ongoing injustice within our local authority housing system. The incremental tenant purchase scheme was launched to give long-term social housing tenants a fair path towards owning their own home. It builds generational wealth, it stabilises neighbourhoods and it rewards hard-working families. Today, however, thousands of families around the country are being fundamentally locked out of this dream through no fault of their own. These are tenants living in Part V properties. Consider the reality on the ground where there are two tenants who have both paid their rent reliably for over ten years, both have identical household incomes and both are upstanding members of the local community. One tenant lives in a standard council-built housing estate and is granted a 40% to 60% discount to purchase their home while the other tenant lives just down the road in a home acquired through a private developer's Part V obligation. This second tenant is handed an outright refusal. This is an arbitrary roadblock. It penalises families simply based on the legal mechanism the council used to acquire the land, the bricks and mortar. While we all agree on the crucial importance of protecting social housing stock, we cannot build a fair system on a foundation of discrimination. Tenants in Part V homes do not want to destroy mixed-tenure communities; they want to permanently invest in them. They want to ensure their children have a permanent stake in the area that they can call home. It is now time for the Government to review these outdated guidelines. We must introduce a fairer model that protects the State's investment while ending the housing lottery for Part V residents. I put it to the Tánaiste that this is not a theoretical issue. It is a very real and pressing concern for families across Cavan and Monaghan and around the country. Under the incremental tenant purchase scheme, houses acquired by local authorities are excluded from sale. Social housing tenants living in a Part V property cannot purchase their home through this scheme. The core issue is that many families entered these homes with the understanding that they would have an opportunity to purchase them. However, due to legislative changes introduced around 2016 that pathway has effectively been closed off on those Part V homes. These are not just houses; they are homes where people have raised families, invested their own money and built their lives. Many of these tenants are now in a position to secure a mortgage and wish to purchase their home. Due to their age, however, this opportunity will not remain open indefinitely. Cavan and Monaghan county councils and other councils have a strong record in housing delivery. I believe there is scope for a practical and fair solution here. I am asking the Government and the Minister to consider allowing flexibility within the scheme, especially to enable local authorities to transfer Part V status in cases where tenants do not wish to purchase, thereby opening a pathway for those who do. This is about fairness, recognising long-term tenants and enabling home ownership where it is both desired and achievable. The primary goal of the Part V is to build long-term, socially integrated and mixed-tenure communities. That is commendable but to deny a few families the chance to own their own homes that they may have lived in for up to 20 years needs to be addressed. Will the Tánaiste commit to reviewing this matter?

I thank Deputy Maxwell for raising this issue on behalf of people in Cavan and Monaghan where he sees it as an issue on the ground, and it has been brought to his attention. The programme for Government and the Government's new housing plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities, commit to maintaining the right of social housing tenants to purchase their home. The aim of the tenant incremental purchase scheme was to try to strike that balance but balance is always a subjective term that requires constant monitoring to ensure the balance is always right. That balance is between increasing the scope for those who are in receipt of long-term housing support to purchase their local authority home and doing it in a way that does not unduly diminish local authority housing stock. As Deputy Maxwell reminded us, there is a difference at the moment where the scheme provides for the purchase by eligible tenants of council houses which are available for sale under the scheme, and the scheme is underpinned by the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014 and the housing (sale of local authority houses) regulation of 2015. Those regulations provide for a number of specified classes of houses to be excluded from sale, including houses transferred to councils for the purpose of providing social housing under Part V, which is really the nub of the issue that Deputy Maxwell brought up. Some other classes of property, for example, houses specifically designed for older people, group Traveller housing schemes and houses provided to facilitate people with disability transferring from institutional care to community-based living are also excluded from the current scheme. The provisions of Part V of the Planning and Development Act are, as Deputy Maxwell said, designed to enable the development of mixed-tenure sustainable communities, and to make sure that there is that mix and that the aim is not eroded over time. We all agree, and I know the Deputy said it too, that the continued development of mixed-tenure communities is important in terms of social integration and cohesion. The Deputy's broader point about the need to review and engage on this is one that I, the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, and the Minister, Deputy Browne, are happy to engage on as well because it is always important to keep these things under review. I know that the Deputy has some real and practical examples in his own constituency, and if he is happy to share them with me and the Ministers, we will certainly have an engagement in relation to them.

I thank the Tánaiste for his response. As I said, this affects a number of families around the country. The people who have come to my office only want to have security in the knowledge that they can own their own home. A number did get a chance before 2016 but their financial circumstances at the time did not allow them to take up that offer to secure a home loan, so they had to decline it. After making a home in these houses, working hard, saving their money and building a track record in savings, some people can now apply and be successful with a home loan application for the house they have lived in for maybe up to the past 20 years but they are now being told, "Sorry, just keep renting it". This is not every Part V house. Not everyone wants to buy but for the families who do, can we look at the scheme? With the announcement of €850 million under the housing activation fund - I thank our colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, for all his work on this over the past year - to unlock houses around the country, including up to 1,195 houses in Monaghan and 750 in Cavan, and other initiatives the Government is bringing forward to help increase the housing stock, if we increase the housing stock, will that help us to alleviate that problem?

That is a very fair way to put it. As housing supply begins to rise in Cavan, Monaghan and across the country, should we then go back and ask, "Hang on, do the balances we had in place at a time of more constrained supply merit being looked at again?". That is a logical thing to do. I thank the Deputy for his words in relation to the work of the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, who has been a real reformer with the Minister, Deputy Browne, in trying to find practical ways of increasing housing supply. The changes we have made in relation to Uisce Éireann, allowing developer-led water infrastructure, and the rural planning guidelines that we are bringing to Cabinet next week are two measures that will have benefit across the country but they will have particular benefit in constituencies like the Deputy's in Cavan and Monaghan. We are eager and happy to engage on this issue. It is that balance. We do believe, as I know the Deputy very much does, in mixed-tenure development. We need to make sure that we do not erode that stock or mix over time but, as supply begins to increase, we will certainly keep these matters under review and are happy to engage further on it.