Councillors call for family payment to be removed from council housing means test
The Working Family Payment is currently classed as assessable income under the Department of Housing's 'Household Means Policy'.
Waterford councillors on the Housing Strategic Policy Committee called for the Working Family Payment to be excluded from the assessable income of council housing tenants.
Rent for council housing tenants (differential rent) is calculated on a percentage of the assessable income of the principal earner and subsidiary earners.
The Working Family Payment supports low-pay employees with dependent children and is currently deemed as assessable income for the differential rent under 2021 government policy.
Sinn Féin councillors Joeanne Bailey, Kate O’Mahony and Independent Joe Kelly all called for the Working Family Payment to be excluded with hopes to ease cost-of-living pressures.
“The Working Family Payment is not taken into account in the means test for a medical card,” Cllr. O’Mahony said to the News & Star.
“Everyone is really struggling, especially with groceries and fuel and trying to run a home, run a house, and a car…to have working family payments and treat it as accessible income, it's another pressure.”
The council's Director of Housing Seamus De Faoite said the rationale for including the payment was grounded in “fairness and equity”.
He said if two families lived on a similar salary, but one had access to a non-assessable working family payment, there would be “a large discrepancy” between the rates each family pays.
