Taoiseach: We will engage with Cork City Council on tenant-in-situ scheme

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has again said Government will engage with Cork City Council on the issue of funding for the tenant-in-situ scheme, “particularly in respect of homes where commitments were made”.

Mr Martin added that nobody wanted to see people becoming homeless.

The tenant-in-situ scheme enables local authorities to buy a rental property if the landlord is selling up, allowing tenants to remain in place and continue renting.

Last month, Cork City Council said Government funding was “insufficient to adequately cover current commitments from 2024 into 2025” and the council’s acquisitions programme was “now ceased”.

Emergency meeting

At an emergency council meeting last week, the council’s chief executive Valerie O’Sullivan reported that city council was initially granted funds for 110 home acquisitions last year, and was then told by the Department of Housing in June it could work to its allocation plus 50%, and costs could be recouped.

The council obtained from the department approval to purchase eight additional homes above that allocation of 165, she said.

Thirty-eight homes were carried forward to 2025, but acquiring those properties and recouping 2024 transactions would exhaust the funds allocated for 2025, leaving the council with an estimated €1.69m deficit.

For its 2025 Acquisition Programme, the council had engaged in discussions on the acquisition of an additional 33 properties, but there would be no funding available for those, Ms O’Sullivan added.

Engage

The Taoiseach had previously told The Echo that the Department of Housing would engage with Cork City Council and other councils in an effort to prevent tenants from becoming homeless, and he repeated that promise on Friday.

“The tenant-in-situ scheme, although it was only established in 2023, it seems to have a broader remit in terms of its application, but we will engage with the councils, we will engage with the city council here, to see what we can do, particularly in respect of homes where commitments were made; we don’t want to see people in those situations going homeless,” he said.

“But the scheme did need tightening up and it needed focus and targeting to what it was originally intended, which was to make sure that people who were in existing homes that were going to be evicted and made homeless, that those houses would be bought out.”

Housing minister James Browne, who was in Cork for a number of engagements with the Taoiseach, added that he had already had engagement with Ms O’Sullivan on Monday and was planning to have further discussions with her.