Council on the lookout for land for housing

Social and affordable housing issues are among the top concerns for local councillors in Mayo, last week's meeting of the county council heard.

Members outlined a series of hardships being endured by people as they grapple with poor or inadequate housing, long delays in the provision of housing or re-housing, slow turnaround of vacant homes, delays in the delivery of refurbishment grants, slow development of council housing on publicly owned land-banks and increasing homelessness.

Cllr Patsy O'Brien said it was critical that people on the council housing list are looked after and that it could not be tolerated that promised funding from the Department of Housing had still not been delivered, citing one case where the funding is delayed by six months.

Cllr Harry Barrett said eight vacant council houses in Chestnut Grove in Castlebar are being held up for far too long. 

“People have been told they have a house but then they are ringing me asking when are they coming on stream and I just don’t know. There is clearly an issue with central housing but we just don’t know what it is. This is slower than Killinascully. I want things moving faster and to have nobody in homeless accommodation in this county."

Cllr Michael Kilcoyne said 77 vacant units on the Ballinrobe Road in Castlebar have still not been put into public use. 

“The crows are coming into their tenth nesting season there. It’s disgraceful there are 170 people homeless in County Mayo and these units up the road, some of which are completely finished other than needing connection to power and services. But nothing is being done. 

"We just have to turn these properties around. Sometimes you just lose faith in democracy because nothing seems to get done and everything is bogged down in red tape while people still suffer on the streets."

Cllr Ger Deere said six houses on the derelict site list were due to be compulsorily purchased by the council but nothing has happened. 

Cllr Adrian Forkan said that some houses in a local authority development in Kiltimagh had been allocated to people but were still not open and issues had been raised at a residents’ meeting over a plan for six more houses, so that what was previously welcomed with open arms was now turning sour.

Cllr Annie May Reape wanted to know if the application for affordable housing in Ballina had been submitted to the Department, commenting: “Because not enough houses are being built and we can see we are way behind.”

Cllr Michael Burke said there was a need to regulate any private housing group that comes in to work with the council and that lessons needed to be learned from the ongoing investigation into the corporate governance workings of one particular group, the Fr Peter McVerry Trust.

On a positive note, Westport councillors John O'Malley and Brendan Mulroy both referenced the recently opened housing scheme on the Golf Course Road in Westport.

“That is the way to roll out houses," said Cllr Mulroy. "As a council, we need to be buying more land, as much as we can, and put houses up. Let’s deliver housing schemes like this in every part of the county. We should be lobbying the government for much more money.”

In his presentation to councillors, Director of Services Tom Gilligan said there were 219 people in private emergency accommodation in Mayo at the end of January. He said progress had been made in 2024 with major schemes coming on stream in Westport, Ballina and Kiltimagh. 

Responding to specific queries, Mr Gilligan said there was a "planning issue" over a boundary wall at Chestnut Grove in Castlebar that needs to be resolved while a price has been agreed with Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) for the six derelict houses on the N5 into Westport. In relation to the estate on the Ballinrobe Road in Castlebar, the Director of Services said he had met with the owner of the site in January and hopes to have "more positive news" within the next few weeks. 

Referring to Cllr Reape's query about affordable housing in Ballina, Mr Gilligan said: “Yes, we have submitted the application for affordable housing and I am in negotiation with a local builder in relation to their provision for Ballina and also for Westport and Castlebar. It is ongoing but we do need the local developers in relation to pricing. Delivery of affordable housing in Westport has shown us the prices things can be done at and I like to think that in Mayo we are delivering generally affordable housing from prices of €240,000 up.”

Mr Gilligan said the council had a good relationship with the housing bodies in its area and praised them for their work. He noted the number of concerns raised by councillors regarding delays in turning around vacant and derelict council stock and told members: “I do want to develop a policy on that and to work with the council's housing strategic policy committee (SPC) because it is not acceptable as it is. I do acknowledge it is something we need to do better.

“On housing in general, we did achieve our target last year and we expect to be increasing that for the coming years. We have purchased a number of pieces of land and are in the market for land and if members know of any available, let us know because there is sufficient funding there at the Department level. It hasn’t been that easy to purchase land so I do want that message to go out loud and clear.” 

Mr Gilligan added: “We also did four CPOs [compulsory purchases] of derelict sites in January but the issue here is these purchases have to be funded, either through programmes such as the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund or the housing programme, as we are not in the position to just buy sites without a stream of funding. Then there is the issue of the resources required for all these individual plots.

“As the Director of Housing, I have outlined before to you that we are looking again at human resources within housing and have made applications already for more staff to ramp up the housing programme, both for housing in general and all the administration work around it.

“As to our own vacant houses and their turnover, we have provided more money in the budget for that and minimal intervention is the policy, i.e. once a property is vacant we should be doing as little as possible to turn it over.”