It’s taking over six months to sell a house to local authorities, according to Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin.  

The Cost Rental Tenant in Situ Scheme designed to keep tenants in their homes is coming under fire for delays in approval. 

A report by The Independent found that only four out of 199 applications in South Dublin County Council have been completed in the past year. 

This tenant-in-situ scheme allows landlords to sell their properties to their local authorities at market rates so current renters can stay there. 

The Government pitched the scheme as one of the solutions against concerns about a wave of evictions when the eviction ban ended. 

However, some 37 applications in South Dublin are not progressing at all according to The Independent.  

"Putting landlords off"

Housing spokesperson for Sinn Féin Eoin Ó Broin said these delays are putting landlords off selling their properties to local authorities. 

“I'm working with tenants and landlords who are expressing a frustration,” he said. “It's taking six months or more to get a decision on such a case.” 

“The fear is some landlords won’t be willing to hang around and they will withdraw from the scheme and sell on the private market, leaving the family homeless.” 

Deputy Ó Broin said he spoke with one landlord who was “very keen to ensure the tenant did not become homeless” and was willing to sell the property at a “slight discount” to speed up the application. 

“They applied to the scheme last September but wrote to me last week that it would be another two months before a decision would be made,” Deputy Ó Broin explained.  

He argued that the issue is not that the application is too complicated, but that local authorities are understaffed.  

“I fully understand the local authority has to do its due diligence; my concern is the local authorities who are under pressure for staff in their housing departments don’t have the adequate staff required to process these applications,” he said.