David Maxwell: Part 5 tenants blocked from buying their homes
Deputy David Maxwell asked the Tánaiste to amend the Incremental Tenant Purchase Scheme 2016 so homes acquired under Part 5 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 can be eligible for purchase. He says the current rules unfairly prevent long-term social housing tenants in Cavan and Monaghan and elsewhere from buying homes they have lived in for years.
Issue explained: Deputy Maxwell set out how the Incremental Tenant Purchase Scheme was intended to give long-term social housing tenants a path to ownership, but that legislative and regulatory exclusions introduced around 2016 mean many Part 5 properties are excluded. He warned this creates an arbitrary distinction between neighbours who otherwise have identical tenancy records and incomes.
Lives affected: Maxwell described families who have raised children, saved, and are now mortgage-ready being told they cannot buy the homes they occupy. He argued that tenants in Part 5 homes often want to invest permanently in their communities rather than undermine mixed-tenure development.
Response and next steps: The Tánaiste acknowledged the point, referenced the Programme for Government and Delivering Homes, Building Communities, and said Ministers including John Cummins and Minister Browne are willing to engage. Maxwell called for a review of the guidelines and for practical flexibility to allow local authorities to transfer Part 5 status where appropriate, protecting social housing stock while ending an unfair barrier to ownership.
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Tánaiste, I wish to ask, will the Government consider amending the Incremental Tenant Purchase Scheme 2016 to allow houses acquired under the Part 5 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 to be made eligible for purchase under the 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, stabilises neighbourhoods and rewards hard-working families. Yet today, thousands of families around the country are being fundamentally locked out of this dream through no fault of their own. They are tenants living in Part 5 properties. Consider the reality on the ground. You can have two tenants who have both paid their rent reliably for over 10 years. Both have identical household incomes. Both are upstanding members of our local community. One tenant lives in a standard council-built housing estate and is granted a 40% to 60% discount to purchase their home. The other tenant lives just down the road in a home acquired via a Private Developers Part 5 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 the 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 5 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 5 residents. To be honest, this is not a theoretical issue. It is very real and a pressing concern for families across Calvin and Monaghan and around the country. Under the Incremental Tenant Purchase Scheme, houses acquired by local authorities are excluded from sale. If you are a social housing tenant living in a Part 5 property, you cannot purchase your home through this scheme. The core issue is this. 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 5 homes. These are just not 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 mortgages and wish to purchase their home. However, due to their age, this opportunity will not remain open indefinitely. Both Calvin and Monaghan County Councils and other councillors have a strong record in housing delivery, and 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 5 status in cases where tenants do not wish to purchase, thereby opening a pathway for those who do. This is about fairness, about recognising long-term tenants and about enabling home ownership where it is both desired and achievable. The primary goal of the Part 5 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 home that they may have lived in for up to 20 years needs to be addressed. Will you commit to reviewing this matter? Well, go raibh maith agat, and thanks so much to Deputy Maxwell for raising this issue, and indeed raising it on behalf of people in Calvin and Monaghan, where he sees it as an issue on the ground that has been brought to his attention. The Programme for Government and the Government's new housing plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities, does commit to maintaining the right of social housing tenants to purchase their home. I suppose the aim of the tenant incremental purchase scheme was to try and strike that balance. Balance is always a subjective term that requires constant monitoring to make sure the balance is always right, but that balance between increasing the scope for those who are in receipt of long-term housing support to purchase their local authority home, but also to do it in a way that doesn't unduly diminish local authority housing stock. As Deputy Maxwell is reminding 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 law by the Housing Miscellaneous Provisions Act of 2014 and the Housing Sale of Local Authority Houses Regulation of 2015. Those regulations do 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 5, which I think really is the nub of the issue that Deputy Maxwell is bringing up. The scheme also excludes 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 5 of the Planning and Development Act are, as Deputy Maxwell says, designed to enable the development of mixed-tenure sustainable communities to make sure that there is that mix and that the aim isn't eroded over time, because I think we all agree, and I know you said that too, that the continued development of mixed-tenure communities is important in terms of social integration and social cohesion. But your broader point of the need to review and engage on this is one that both myself and Minister Cummins and Minister Brown are happy to engage on as well, because it's always important to keep these things under review. I know you have some real and practical examples in your own constituency that, if you'd be happy to share with myself and the Ministers, we'll certainly have an engagement in relation to this. Thank you for the 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 and the knowledge that they can own their own home. A number did get a chance back 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 the offer. Now, after making a home in these houses, some people who have worked hard, saved their money, built a track record in savings, they can now apply and be successful with a home loan for the house they have lived in for maybe up to the last 20 years, but they're told, sorry, no, just keep renting it. This is not every part five house. Not everyone wants to buy, but for the families who do, can we look at the scheme? With the announcement of the 850 million euro from the Housing Activation Fund, and I want to thank our colleague Minister John Cummins for all his work over the last year on this, to unlock houses around the country. I know in Calvin, Monaghan and Monaghan, I think it's 1195 houses up to, and 750 in Calvin. With these initiatives and other initiatives that the government are bringing forward to help raise the housing stock, is this something that, if we get the housing stock increased, that we can help us to alleviate that problem? Thank you. Thanks very much to Deputy Maxwell. I think that's a very fair way he puts it, that as housing supply begins to rise in Calvin and Monaghan and across the country, should we then go back and say, hang on, are the balances that we've had in place at a time of more constrained supply, do they merit looking at again? I think that's a logical thing to do. Thanks for your words in relation to the work of Minister Cummins, who I think has been a real reformer, with Minister Brown, and trying to find practical ways of increasing housing supply. I think we'll see both through the changes that we've made in relation to Iska Eireann, allowing developer-led water infrastructure, and the rural planning guidelines that we bring to Cabinet next week. I think there are two measures that will have benefit across the country, but I think they'll have particular benefit in constituencies like your own in Calvin, Monaghan too. So we're eager and happy to engage on this issue. It is that balance. We do believe, and you believe, I know very much, in mixed-tenure development. We do need to make sure we don't erode that stock or that mix over time. But certainly I think as supply begins to increase, we'll certainly keep these matters under review and happy to engage further on it.
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