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Simon Harris – who recently criticised jobseekers and NGOs – and his parents won’t answer questions about whether the Harrises were eligible for a state-backed housing scheme that saw their €600,000 home sold and leased back to them after they’d accumulated mortgage arrears.
Harris’s parents, Bart and Mary, were approved for the low-income scheme that had an annual household income cap of €38,500 at a time when Bart was working as a taxi driver and his son Adam declared he was living in the home – while earning €60,000 a year at an NGO.
Mortgage-to-rent provider Home For Life bought the house for €367,000 in 2022 and leased it to Wicklow County Council for 25 years in a transaction declared a full market price sale on the property price register, despite being advertised for sale at €490,000 in October 2019.
Other homes in the Greystones estate sold in 2022 achieved €448,500 to €610,000. The maximum valuation for the state scheme was €450,000 at the time of the sale – €40,000 less than the Harrises had sought for their home almost three years earlier.
May be eligible
The mortgage-to-rent scheme was established under Fine Gael in 2012 to help homeowners at risk of losing their homes to mortgage debt.
The Harrises continue to live in their three-bedroom home while paying a differential rent to the council.
The married couple may be eligible to buy back the property – worth around €600,000 - at the original €367,000 sale price from July next year, according to Home for Life.
Home for Life CEO Paul Cunningham told The Ditch he couldn’t comment on the valuation process used in individual cases.
Simon Harris came under fire recently after telling his Fine Gael party colleagues that “we need to have a much closer look at what’s happening with public money when it goes out to organisations that are not the government” and that “the dole is a safety net, not a way of life”.
‘The tánaiste declined to say…’
The tánaiste’s brother Adam Harris listed his parents’ Greystones home as his usual residential address on 2021 and 2022 CRO filings.
His income as CEO of AsIAm would have pushed Bart and Mary Harris well above the €38,500-a-year household income limit under the mortgage-to-rent scheme.
Adam Harris – who now lives in Dublin – declined to say if he was ordinarily resident in Redford Park at the time of the application, while his parents would not say if their daughter Gemma, a pharmaceutical buyer, was still living at home.
Simon Harris lived in the home as a €92,000-a-year TD while his parents – who are now social housing tenants – accumulated the mortgage arrears that led to them availing of the scheme.
The tánaiste declined to say whether he was aware of his parents’ financial difficulties or if he contributed to the mortgage or household expenses while living there.
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