Mortgage Allowance Scheme
Information
The Mortgage Allowance Scheme is an allowance of up to €11,450 payable over a 5 year period to tenants or tenant purchasers of local authority houses. The allowance is also available to tenants of housing associations in housing provided under the Rental Subsidy Scheme who are buying or building a house with a mortgage.
The allowance is paid directly to the lending agency and your repayments reduced accordingly for the first five years of the mortgage. Your mortgage may be from a commercial lending agency or a local authority.
Rules
Your annual income must be less than €28,000 a year and you must have a mortgage of at least €38,092.14.
The allowance is paid directly to the lending agency and your mortgage payments are reduced in each of the first five years as follows;
| Year | Allowance per year |
| First | €3,560 |
| Second | €2,800 |
| Third | €2,040 |
| Fourth | €1,780 |
| Fifth | €1,270 |
The allowance paid in any year, cannot exceed the amount of the mortgage repayments.
If you are buying a house under the Shared ownership scheme, you are not eligible for the Mortgage Allowance Scheme.
The house must be suitable to your needs, meet certain minimum standards and be acceptable to the local authority.
You may be eligible if you are:
- a local authority tenant or a tenant purchaser and you want to buy a private house and return your present house to the local authority
- a tenant for more than one year of a home provided by a housing association under the Rental Subsidy Scheme and you want to buy a private house and return your present house to the local authority.
How to apply
Contact your local authority for more information.
Language
Related Documents
- Shared Ownership Scheme
This scheme allows a home purchaser in Ireland to buy a proportion of a home to begin with, increasing the proportion in steps until the whole house is owned. While you are buying a proportion, you share ownership with the local authority. - Low cost housing sites
Local authorities may provide housing sites at low cost to help people in housing need to provide their own housing. - Improvement Works in Lieu of Local Authority Housing
Local authorities in Ireland may improve or extend privately owned houses as an alternative to providing local authority housing. Introduction to this Scheme.
Contact Us
If you have a question relating to this topic you can contact the Citizens Information Phone Service on 0761 07 4000 (Monday to Friday, 9am to 9pm) or you can visit your local Citizens Information Centre.