Lack of Mayo builders delaying house building schemes

Anton McNulty

MAYO County Council are considering constructing Rapid Build Housing in order to meet their housing targets due to the lack of builders in the county.
The lack of building contractors in the county resulted in delays to the commencement of a 27 house scheme in Swinford, because only two contractors tendered for the project. The project had to be re-tendered when only one of the contractors came through the evaluation process.
Paul Benson, the Head of Housing with Mayo County Council told last week’s SPC Housing Committee meeting that this incident highlighted the difficulty in getting large construction projects off the ground.
“That speaks to a serious issue in terms of the roll out of construction work and the lack of available contractors to take on work at scale,” he said, adding that for some contractors ‘taking on a 27 house scheme is a fairly big undertaking’ and ‘a risk’.
He explained that there were only around six or seven contractors in the county who were able to carry out work and many were too busy to commit to projects the Council wanted to start. He said as a result they will have to consider Rapid Build Housing to meet their housing targets.
“We had one large contractor who just couldn’t tender for a recent project because he has two already and is also building privately. They just can’t get the resources to commit. If that pool of contractors doesn’t grow it will be impossible to be in a position to award contracts and we won’t be able to deliver. The last thing we want is a contractor on site for what is supposed to be for a year and ends up for two or three.
“There is a proposal from government and it is something we have to look at is to move to rapid build. That has been done in Dublin and in the urban centres and we are arranging to look at a few of them. The days of having your bricklaying, plasterers and electricians on site may be a thing of the past. It is something we have to look at,” he said.

Housing Capital Programme
In the Housing Capital Programme, the Council have been set a target to deliver 708 units by 2021 but they were planning for 808 of which 500 will be new builds. To date they have delivered 216 units but only 36 of them are new builds.
Sinn Féin councillor Joe McHale said that for the last ten years it was obvious that there has been a lack of contractors and young apprentices have left the country. He said being realistic, he did not see ‘much coming down the stream’ within the next two years.
Chairman of the SPC, Cllr Gerry Ginty, said that despite the collapse of the construction sector, there was no valid reason for the government at the time to stop building social housing.
“There was practically nothing built in the country over them eight years. That is the problem. Those eight years have been lost and we are trying to play catch-up,” he said.
In response to a question by Cllr McHale, Mr Benson added that there was no possibility of the Council directly employing people to build houses themselves as it would be ‘impractical’.