A special meeting of City Councillors is taking place tonight to discuss the upcoming tenant purchase scheme.
From January, people who’re council tenants will be given the chance to buy their houses – at 60 percent less than the market price.
However, there are concerns about the scheme here in the city – given that Dublin is in the midst of a housing and homeless crisis.
Sinn Fein called for a council meeting tonight, to ask for a deferral from the Environment Minister, until more houses can be built.
Councillor Daithi Doolan:
“It’s a knee jerk reaction to the demands of the public and we think that always makes for poor legislation, it’s fundamentally flawed and needs to be reviewed. Also in the city here today, in Dublin City we have an unprecedented housing crisis, why would we sell off our greatest asset, which is our houses, when we need more houses, not less”.
But there are some who feel the debate is ill informed and short sighted.
Fianna Fail’s Paul McAuliffe:
“What Sinn Fein are proposing is that for a short period of time people would be prevented from buying their house, in some way to respond to the homeless crisis. It’s totally uninformed and misguided because the number of people who would buy their home under this scheme would not be handing them back in the short term”.
If councillors do vote in favour of the motion, the final decision on whether the council will be exempt from the legislation will be made by Alan Kelly.
