Councillors fume over number of homeless people accommodated in ‘neglected’ Ballinrobe

A county councillor has said Mayo County Council’s top housing official has ‘neglected’ Ballinrobe by housing large numbers of homeless people in the area.

Cllr Michael Burke (Fine Gael) and Damien Ryan (Fianna Fáil) have both called for a greater balance in the proportion of emergency accommodation allocated to each district in Mayo.

Citing official figures, Cllr Ryan said that the percentage of people in emergency accommodation in the Claremorris-Swinford Municipal District was ‘not acceptable’. compared to the other three municipal districts.

The municipal district is currently accommodating nine families, one couple and seventeen single people.

Westport-Belmullet is accommodating one homeless family and three single people in emergency accommodation.

Ballina is accommodating one family, one couple and four single people, with Castlebar accommodating one couple, ten single people and five families.

Cllr Ryan called for a ‘a meaningful attempt’ to balance the allocation of homeless people among the five municipal district areas.

He estimated that 65 percent of homeless people in the county are being accommodated in Claremorris-Swinford.

“If the need originates in your area, that’s fine. Each area should have to look after itself. But certainly, from the area I represent and the geographic area of South Mayo, we are doing the heavy lifting in this regard and that needs to stop,” Cllr Ryan told the monthly meeting of Mayo County Council.

Agreeing with Cllr Ryan, Cllr Burke said Ballinrobe was getting ‘the rough end of the stick’ by accommodating homeless people.

“Incidents do happen, and incidents will happen. Talk to the gardaí, talk to the ambulance crew. They know what goes on there,” Cllr Burke said.

“The people of Ballinrobe will stand for fairness. We won’t stand for unfairness. And taking somebody else’s problem to our door is the big problem.”

Ballina-based councillor Mark Duffy agreed that homeless people should be accommodated in their own locality.

Cllr Duffy said he recently dealt with two people from his area who were offered accommodation in Ballinrobe as there was nowhere else available.

“The only place they were offered was Ballinrobe, and they didn’t want to go to Ballinrobe,” said Cllr Duffy.

“They didn’t want to go to Ballinrobe. They grew up in town, they wanted to be accommodated locally. He was literally sleeping rough as opposed to going to Ballinrobe because it was too far away.”

Cllr Burke said he had been in contact with ‘a good guy’ from ‘the Ballina-Swinford area’ who left emergency accommodation in Ballinrobe because he did not want to be in the area.

Describing the issue of homelessness as ‘complex’ Tom Gilligan, Mayo County Council’s Director of Services for Housing, said he was not in favour of providing emergency accommodation for people in their own municipal district.

“From our point of view, we are here to satisfy people’s needs, and deal with the homeless situation as best we can. But I think, in a sense, we are on the right track and we’re getting there. We just need a little more time just to progress,” he said.

Mr Gilligan added that he would like to see less reliance on third-party providers for homeless people.

“We need to come up with a more sustainable way of dealing with homelessness, apart from relying on hotels and B&Bs,” he said.

“We are certainly working on a strategy in relation to that. It’s not finished yet, but that’s the way it’s heading.”

Cllr Ryan and Cllr Burke did not accept Mr Gilligan’s remarks and doubled down on their calls for a greater balance of emergency homeless accommodation in Mayo.

Cllr Burke said: “You’re being crazy on this, Tom. We’ve been talking about this for the last two years and you’ve neglected Ballinrobe 100 percent on this whole thing. I’ll just say one big word to you, I hope the courts, over the next couple of weeks, don’t prove you wrong.”