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A MAN WHO applied for a government-backed mortgage scheme under his name only was turned down because his wife is a non-EU national.
There are ten criteria that an applicant must satisfy to be eligible for the Rebuilding Ireland Home Loan (RIHL).
On his own, the man said he met all the criteria for the RIHL.
He applied for it as a sole applicant but was turned down and told a married person cannot apply for the mortgage on their own.
He didn’t apply for the scheme with his wife because one of the criteria for applicants is an indefinite right to remain in Ireland either through nationality or refugee status. If he wasn’t married, he’d likely have been awarded the mortgage.
Rebuilding Ireland Home Loan
The RIHL is a government-backed mortgage for first-time buyers which you can avail of through your local authority. The buyers can use the loan to purchase a new or second-hand property or use it for a self build.
Crucially, it can offer up to 90% of the market value of the property making it an attractive option for those looking to get a mortgage who may not be able to save enough to meet the deposit requirements of a bank.
People can apply as a single or joint applicants. Single applicants cannot have an income greater than €50,000 per annum. Joint applicants cannot have an income greater than €75,000.
There had been fears that the scheme was in danger of running out of funds last year as the government had underestimated the demand for the scheme.
Earlier this month, the scheme increased its interest rates in a move the opposition described as “sneaky”.
A Department of Housing spokesperson told TheJournal.ie that the RIHL “remains the most affordable mortgage on the market”.
Situation
In an initial email, the applicant wrote to the Department of Housing to say he was interested in applying for a scheme and asked “may I apply as a single applicant even though I am married”.
He also pointed to his wife’s visa status in this email. His wife had only previously started new employment, and their combined income didn’t exceed the joint threshold for the scheme.
In response, a higher executive officer at the Department told him: “Yes you can apply as a single applicant. In this case only your income will be taken into account when deciding if you are eligible for the home loan.”
Although government-backed, the RIHL is administered and issued by the local authority of the applicant.
This man applied through Dublin City Council. At an appointment with an officer from the council, he says he was told his application was “complete and generally correct”.
However, he was told his application was not accepted because he was applying as a single applicant despite being married.
He then went back and outlined what had happened to the department official he had initially dealt with.
That official replied: “Having re-read through your previous correspondence I now realise I provided you with incorrect information regarding the Rebuilding Ireland Home Loan.
If you are married, you must apply for the Rebuilding Ireland Home Loan as a joint couple. I misunderstood your circumstances and without the full information to hand it is difficult to provide answers to queries such as this. It is for this reason that we encourage potential applicants to contact their local authority directly as part of the application process, and I apologise for this confusion.
Not to be dissuaded, the applicant delved deeper into the issue asking to know on what basis he couldn’t apply as a single applicant.
He found a case previously taken where a bank had refused a mortgage in similar circumstances.
In a case that came before the Equality Tribunal almost a decade ago, a man applied for a mortgage in his own name after the bank had originally told him his wife’s poor credit rating meant they were refused a mortgage when applying together.
The man was then advised that he would not be able to get a mortgage in his sole name because he was married. The bank said it was “best practice” to lend to married couples jointly when it came to mortgages for a family home.
The Equality Tribunal ruled that the man had been discriminated against when he was turned down for the mortgage.
“I am satisfied from the evidence that the respondent, in effect, operates a policy of not lending to a married person in their sole name where the mortgage security is the family home,” the adjudicator said.
The adjudicator added that the complainant “was discriminated against on the civil status ground”.
The man was awarded €6,300 compensation, the maximum amount that could be awarded in the case. The adjudicator also made an order for the bank to ensure such a situation of discrimination didn’t happen again.
That case applied to a poor credit rating while this one with the RIHL case above sees a non-national without permanent permission to reside excluded from applying.
Turned down
Despite the applicant referencing this precedent in his request for his application to be considered, he was turned down for the RIHL.
In the decision from Dublin City Council, he was told: “As you are married you are not a single applicant and if applying for the RIHL, you must jointly apply with your wife.”
It was also pointed out that the council was awaiting instruction on whether it could accept Stamp 4 visa applicants on the scheme, and that even a joint application “could not be accepted at this time”. Stamp 4 indicates permission to stay in Ireland for a specific period, and allows them to work.
The man got in touch with a solicitor who wrote to the council on his behalf, claiming he had been discriminated against on one of the nine grounds listed in the Equality Act 2000, i.e. his marital status.
After a series of emails back and forth, an administrative officer from Dublin City Council wrote to the applicant to say that it was the instruction from the Department of Housing that single applications for married persons cannot be accepted.
“If the department inform the local authorities that individual applications from married persons are to be accepted then your application will be forwarded to the underwriter and credit committee for assessment,” the officer said.
The man then got back onto the department and asked what regulation or legal basis set out that the home loan couldn’t be given to a single applicant who’s married.
The department’s response was to say it was up to the local authority.
“Under legislation, a local authority is independent in the performance of its functions and we are precluded from exercising any power or control in relation to any individual case with which a housing authority is or may be concerned,” it said. “We are therefore not in a position to comment on or deal with individual cases.”
In effect, the man was told by the council that it was a matter for the department. The department said it was a matter for the council.
Either way, he wasn’t getting approved for the mortgage.
He submitted an FOI request asking for a basis on which they could refuse his application. He claimed there was nothing in the Housing (Rebuilding Ireland Home Loans) Regulations 2018 Act which prohibited a single person who’s married from being eligible for the scheme.
In a lengthy response, six records were denied in the FOI request due to legal privilege and the man claims that there was nothing included that demonstrated why he was not deemed eligible.
He told TheJournal.ie: “Regardless of what the laws and regulations may or may not say, I find this to be a very discriminative practice. Given that I just married a few months before my RIHL application, my marriage was a really expensive endeavor. My advice would be to apply first to RIHL and then marry (eventually you can never know for sure if your spouse will be eligible or not).”
TheJournal.ie has contacted the Department of Housing and Dublin City Council for comment.
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The scheme is for people who are unable to obtain sufficient credit through commercial banks. If he applied jointly with his wife to commercial banks he would likely be able to get sufficient credit. It was a correct decision to turn him down imho.
@Gordon Comstock: I must have missed that. Did the article not state that jointly they would qualify except his wife is not from the EU? If he were single, or married to someone from the EU he would qualify. I can see his point.
@Gordon Comstock: the application requires that he submits a refusal from 2 banks…. Would be interesting to see if they were single applications or not
@Matt Connolly: There are always those trying to game the system. Its a poor reflection on the Journal that this is actually published as a news item.
@Feardorcha Ó Maolomhnaigh: “their combined income didn’t exceed the joint threshold for the scheme.”
I agree with the decision, if a mortgage is given in one name only that means the debt is only owned by that person, if he defaults they can’t come after the wife but being married she is entitled to half the house
@Gordon Comstock: if she doesnt have relevant paperwork to remain in Ireland then she wont get a mortgage witha a bank. You need a stamp 4 on you GNIB card
@Louise Tracey: shes only entitled to half of what’s left after the debt is paid
@Gordon Comstock: good aul rascixm baked in by ffg poor guy
Sounds like something that would happen under FG alright. Sure wasn’t a Garda accused of child abuse because of a typo at Tulsa and people suffering from cancer walking out of hospital thinking they were cured. Enough is enough. FG out
@Conan Campbell: do you think the country was perfect before FG? Do you honestly think it would be perfect after FG are not in power, because if you do you live in a dream world.
As for all the examples you’ve listed, they are errors and regardless of who is in government the same people and same organisations such as the Gardai or HSE can still make errors.
That doesn’t excuse them, but blaming the government for them regardless of who is in power is simply idiotic.
@Conan Campbell: That was a party political broadcast on behalf of Sinn Féin
@Feardorcha Ó Maolomhnaigh: he has my vote… yes all governments make errors, others watch people die on the streets, or while they wait for surgery/ medicines. FFG out!
@Barry: OK Barry, here’s two more: giving the greyhound industry €18m a year only for the poor animals to be slaughtered and part funding the FAI without any oversight. Two examples of FG’s fiscal prudence. It has been shambles after shambles with them.
@Chaos Ape: SF in Northern Ireland have overseen a bigger homeless problem then Ireland and Northern Ireland has a health care crisis.
Not to mention they were happy to take tax payer money while not act doing their job in government.
They’ve done a superb job altogether.
@Barry: SF achieved more of their goals outside of Stormont in 3 years than 20 years in it – same sex marriage, abortion and Irish language recognition. They completely outplayed their adversaries. And when they returned they had retained the number of Westminster seats they had and formed the foundation of more nationalist representation than unionist at Westminster for the first time ever. It was a political masterclass.
@Paul O’Sullivan: It was the Garda’s own children. I’m referring to the best known whistleblower. He was completely exonerated.
@Barry: nonsense, one person can be very dangerous when handed power (Hitler) we are a small country being run through instructions from the EU by said leader with a huge ego and his eye on the dictatorship in Brussels
@Barry: so as long as all contoinues as is, your happy from vested interests or nepotism to watch it limp and hurt as long as your not touched. What age are you. This isn’t a football team it’s our future as a country
@Conan Campbell: let’s not forget the children’s hospital so far costing over €2.5 billion and now been delayed until 2022 been built in an already congested area and against the advice of experts Consultants and parents of sick children when it could already be up and running for a quarter of cost if built on the blanchardstown hospital site or site they were offered free in clonshaugh, but then we know real reason that was refused now, instead they want a haint sewage plant búit there, in years to come Charlie Haughey will look like Del boy compered to this lot
And your problem is?
If he was to be successful on his own his income must have been near the income limit and his wife’s income could have pushed them over the limit, banks don’t have limits, as we’ve all seen, so I wouldn’t bother taking it to the courts.
@The next small thing: banks do have limits but not in a way it benefits a consumer.
@The next small thing: The article says that even their joint income was under the threshold for a loan.
Because he is married he is not a sole applicant unless he intends to live separately from his wife! He would have to show that was his intention though and not being separated or no application for divorce would go against him.
Clearly he is trying to game the system and get something which he is not entitled to!
@Fergal_Carlow: as far as I can see, the combined income of both of them would still have been below the threshold so they would have qualified for the scheme. The two sticking points seem to be that his wife is a non national without settled status and that the application must be in both names if they are a married couple. On the surface I can see the rational of the regulation however, this appears to be a situation which wasn’t factored in when the scene was drawn up. I just wonder what happens if a couple aren’t married and one applies and is successful – what happens if they marry after the deal is done? Or if there are children involved at a later stage?
Who cares
@TJC Mc: Half the population.
@Cormac Laffan: lol
Whatever opinions about whether he should get the mortgage, it’s a prime example of different government departments not being in line with each other or having defined policies. Very frustrating for anyone who’s run into a parallel situation…
Well if you cant get a normal mortgage as a single applicant when married why would you get a rihl mortgage. I got approved in the bank as a single applicant ( error made by new mortgage advosor) because my wife doesn’t work, only to be told after that because I’m married it has to be a joint application. And because she doesn’t work she becomes a dependent and I was refused.
Blame Leo lol might as well beat the looneys to it
@Colm Curran: Leo and his party are being blamed on quite a few public concerns, health, homelessness, overspending, lack of resources,young women needlessly dying to name a few
@Colm Curran: You do know you appear to be a bit looney, yeah?
This may be unconstitutional under the provisions related to marriage. It will affect anyone married to a British citizen from this day week as well so likely an election issue.
@Pat Kelly: incorrect. Ireland’s preexisting treaties with the UK are still valid. UK and Irish citizens can still live in the other country regardless of Brexit.
The only people who got approved for this, where relatives of the COCO workers. They set the criteria to make it extremely difficult to get excepted, like the 2 refusal letters they had to have the amount the bank refused to give you. Which the banks don’t do. The people in council hadn’t a clue how to initiate the scheme either. The criteria was way stricter than the banks. Absolute joke of a scheme. You also had to buy your house insurance or mortgage protection from certain company and it was literally 6 times the cost of any other provider.
The coco worker doing the scheme in limerick we dealt with, were absolute pigs, rude and unbelievably unhelpful you’d actually think it was her first saving we wanted.
@Stephen Walshe: do you have a list of all these council workers who got the loans and do you know them all personally?
@Stephen Walshe: I’m not familiar with the scheme Stephan but as regards a requirement to purchase insurance only from a certain provider – I would imagine that this is illegal. I seem to remember a court case in the good old days (1990s).
Does a spouse not have automatic right to a percentage ownership of the family home irrespective of whose name is on the deeds? If that is the case then how could he be entitled to the loan if a non-EU citizen is precluded from applying?
@EillieEs: that is exactly the issue here. Spouses have rights, if it is the family home. The lender’s security is affected if the borrower is married, or has a qualified cohabitant. Nothing very unusual about the way the Council responded from a purely legal point of view.
I’m not sure where the simple logic is not working here for this guy. You can be single or married, but you can’t legally be single and married at the same time unless you are legally separated. It’s not rocket science, You are either married or single, he seems to be trying to redefine relationship states purely to suit his own application here.
@Father Ultan Crosbie, he gives good mass…: he gets the logic but he doesn’t agree with it. It’s like if someone said you looked like a donkey. You’d get what they meant alright but you wouldn’t agree. Two different things entirely.
The councils are not fit to run these schemes, as an intermediary it just leave room for ambiguity and the good old blame game.
I too have had a terrible experience with DCC staff provided me with wrong information. It’s not acceptable but the minister chose this policy and so the government will ultimately answer for that mistake.
@Craig Osborne: Craig, the simplest thing to do here would have been for the operating method to have been drawn up by whichever government department was responsible for introducing it and to train and liaise with the various council staff. But then, that might make sense …..
What if you marry a non-EU National after you secure your mortgage? Will they turf you out ?
Why is his wife not allowed as a non EU national. She can stay here ss long as they’re married or until they pay the grand to get Irish citizenship.
My missus is non EU. We got a mortgage 12 years ago. The banks had no problem with us.
Am I reading the article correctly. He was refused because he did not fit the criteria. Then there was a list of ifs, buts and maybes. He didn’t fit the criteria end of story.
Load OF Bollox. Civil Servants taking the piss, in my limited view.
@Trevor Gillespie: definitely a limited view, the banks have the exact same rules….
Lot of info in that article a bit like the how I spend my money sh~at, it’s not as reported as there is a election. They aren’t in control of the big picture.
Not be long till all the bigot loonies appear in the comments.
Cry baby he is
Unbelievable
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