Revealed: Tipperary councillor says HAP inspections 'a bit over the top'

At the recent sitting of the Tipperary/Cahir/Cashel Municipal District meeting, Cllr Mary Hanna Hourigan brought up the issue of Housing Assistant Payment Scheme (HAP) inspections asking too much of home owners and called them ‘a bit over the top completely.’

She mentioned that the tenant she spoke to said that they were completely happy with the house and it was in excellent condition compared to many houses owned by the council.
“A lot of these privately rented houses are in far better condition than our own stock in my opinion and I spend a lot of time going to look at them.” said Cllr Hourigan.

Cllr Hourigan told the meeting that in this instance there was some moss growth on the roof of the house being HAP inspected which was not significant and not causing a problem at present, but maybe could become an issue in a number of years.

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She mentioned there were pages of things to be fixed which she said were ‘beyond reason.’ Cllr Hourigan had tried numerous times to contact the HAP inspector regarding the issue.

She told the meeting that the landlord of the property carried out four or five of the things he felt he could do but that some of the stuff is beyond belief. She finished by saying “we can’t have one rule for our own stock and expect landlords to carry out all these extra things.”

She worried many landlords were selling their properties and leaving the market because it was no longer viable for them to keep renting with the stringent standards required of the HAP scheme.

Cllr Andy Maloney said that the inspections were crazy, mentioning a landlord who spent 12,000 euro on a house a few years ago and now he has had to spend another four thousand on the house, which is not that old to begin with.

He told the meeting that this particular landlord will have to serve a notice to quit and will now sell the house because of the money required in the upkeep after HAP inspections. “The person who’s in the house now will be back out into the council looking for a house.”

The housing department of the council were present to respond to the queries. They said “the guidelines are set down with requirements, when the inspector goes out to inspect them, they can’t just ignore some of them, they have to follow the guidelines.”

Cllr Moloney suggested a new traffic light system be put in place where there is red, yellow and green for things that come up during a HAP inspection and explained that urgent things to be fixed are marked red and less urgent ones green. This would allow landlords time to fix less urgent issues.

The reason for such stringent standards during a HAP inspection is to ensure that the property complies with the Minimum Housing Standards Act.

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