COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

South Dublin County Council Crest

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, January 12, 2026

QUESTION NO. 1

QUESTION: Councillor D. Adelaide

To ask the Chief Executive to advise whether any circulars, directives, or instructions have been issued by central government regarding the ring-fencing of housing maintenance expenditure from income generated through council rents, and to provide details of any such guidance.

REPLY:

Under the new National Housing Plan- Delivering Homes, Building Communities 2025-30, policy objective 6.13-Fair and Equitable Social Housing Rents System it states that:

'The plan builds on work progressed under Housing for All, the work of the Housing Commission and the AHB Strategic Forum and it outlines that the Government will undertake a comprehensive review of the differential rents system in local authorities. A key element of any future framework is ensuring that similar households with comparable financial means pay the same amount of rent for their social home, regardless of who their social housing landlord is, or in which local authority area they are located. Government recognises the significant role that housing rents income plays in the structure of social housing financing, where rents paid by social housing tenants are utilised to contribute to the maintenance and improvement of their homes, and to sustaining the communities in which they live'.

SDCC manages over 10,500 homes under various management arrangements. Currently each local authority has autonomy in designing its Differential Rent Scheme, which determines how rents are set for social housing tenants. The decision to set the differential rent is an executive function. It requires strategic oversight to ensure that rent policies are equitable, transparent, and sufficient to support the long-term upkeep of social housing assets, safeguarding both tenant welfare and the integrity of our housing portfolio. In recent years, the council has faced significant increased expenditure related to the maintenance and management of its housing stock. Ensuring that rental income is sufficient to meet these costs is essential for the sustainability of our housing services.

Over the last five years, our housing stock has increased and an extensive stock condition survey programme has been commissioned with over 1900 homes surveyed in 2025. The results of this survey will inform the future development of our planned maintenance /energy efficiency programmes, prioritising upgrades such as windows, kitchens, bathrooms, electrical and heating systems. These improvements will require significant additional investment to enhance the quality of homes for our tenants.

We will review the differential rent scheme to ensure appropriate funding for the level of investment required for works arising from stock condition surveys. Recent independent analysis of local authority differential rent schemes shows significant variance between rents in South Dublin and elsewhere nationally for households with the same incomes. We will balance the need for investment in maintaining and improving our housing stock with affordability considerations for tenants and full reports on both stock condition surveys and differential rent analysis will be presented to the Housing Strategic Policy Committee in 2026.

We are also annually required to outline to DHLGH the projected income from housing rents in our adopted revenue budget and the proposed percentage of rental income to be spent on the management and maintenance of our housing stock as part of returns relating to capital receipts from the sale of existing social housing stock to tenants and how such income may be used for improvement works to social housing stock, subject to approval by the DHLGH on the programme of such works.