Council appeal to increase the ceiling on local authority home loans rejected

An appeal by Meath County Council to the Government to increase Meath’s property price ceiling on local authority home loans has been rejected because “an increase would not be justified at this time”.

Councillors had backed a motion tabled by Fianna Fail Cllr Damien O’Reilly to have the ceiling raised from its current level of €330,000 to €360,000.

The local authority home loan scheme is regarded as a valuable plan to home ownership for those unable to access enough credit from commercial lenders. The Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien had recently announced revisions to the scheme including increases to the income limits and property price limits.

The house price limit applying in Meath had been increased by €10,000 to €330,000, the Minister said. He noted the council’s call for the increase to €360,000 as applied in four Dublin local authorities along with Wicklow and Kildare.

He said that these changes were based on an analysis combining overall house transactions in 2022 and the local authority home loan scheme limits at the time in each local authority. “For Meath, it was found that the significant majority of house price transactions were within the existing house price limits, so therefore a large increase in the scheme house price limit was not required”, he said.

The same analysis had been conducted for the other local authorities mentioned, which found that a higher proportion of property transactions exceeded the previous maximum property price limit: therefore a higher house price limit increased was warranted.

“Therefore, further house price limit increase is not appropriate at this time. However, the situation will be kept under review and may be revisited if housing market conditions require it,” Mr O’Brien said.