A Tipperary Oireachtas member says the introduction of a staged payment to the Croí Cónaithe Fund Scheme could be transformative for prospective homeowners.
The Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant will be increased from €30,000 to €50,000 for vacant properties and from €50,000 to €70,000 for derelict properties.
In addition, it will be extended to cover houses built up to 2007 and will be available for properties intended for rental as well as owner-occupied.
However Senator Garret Ahearn says in a majority of cases, prospective purchasers need access to funding at the starting point of purchase and refurbishment.
He says introducing a staged payment option for the provision of the grant would eliminate this most significant barrier.
“Something similar that’s being done with the First Time Buyers grant where the payment is done up front. Obviously for this you can’t do a payment up front for work that hasn’t even commenced. But what we certainly can do is give stage payments to people so that when they’re actually refurbishing a property or a dwelling that they don’t have to get all of the money from a bank and then have to repay that once they get the funding from the state because then there’s an added cost of interest rates that have to be paid back to the bank for that.”
