Mayo area with the highest number of holiday homes revealed

THE Belmullet Electoral Area has more than 2,000 holiday homes, making up a quarter of the area’s housing stock.

According to a new analysis by the Farming Independent, Belmullet recorded 2,074 holiday homes in the last Census – a quarter of the area’s entire housing stock.

Only Glenties, Donegal (28.3 percent), Milford, Donegal (26.3 percent), Kenmare, Kerry (25.6 percent) had a higher percentages of holiday homes than Belmullet, which covers most of Erris and all of Achill.

There were 1,431 holiday homes recorded in Westport, which made up 14.4 percent of the area’s housing stock.

Swinford had the next-highest number of holiday homes with 733 (7.4 percent of its stock) followed by Ballina with 668 (5.3 percent), Claremorris (544) and Castlebar (537).

Robert McGreal of REA McGreal Burke, said that the Belmullet area still had plenty of second-hand affordable housing stock despite the high number of holiday homes.

“Belmullet is its own bit of an ecosystem, the Erris peninsula has a population of 10,000. The town of Belmullet has a population of 1,000 and you’re really an hour from anywhere. So if you are going to do your shopping you’re going to go to Belmullet to do it. The money is staying in Belmullet to be fair,” Mr McGreal told The Mayo News.

“You have a massive population that work away from Belmullet. There will be families in Belmullet where the father works in England or they travel or and back fairly regularly. Now they have a home in Belmullet but they live in England, but they are home four or five months of the year and I’d say it’s a bit disingenuous to call those houses holiday homes because really those people spend about half their time in Belmullet.”