Mayo County Council’s record on housing labelled ‘a failure’

LOCAL politicians have described Mayo County Council’s record on housing as ‘a failure’.

A presentation on the local authority’s progress on housing yesterday (Monday) was met with disdain from local representatives, with one describing the council’s record as ‘abysmal’.

This comes following comments from Mayo TD Michael Ring, who accused the council of failing to deliver on housing.

Since 2019, the local authority has delivered 360 social houses, including 291 council-built properties.

Under Housing for All, Mayo County Council aims to deliver over 1,000 social housing units from various strands before the end of 2026.

According to a report presented to elected representatives, the council aims to deliver 157 houses in 2024, 190 in 2025, 234 in 2026 and 242 in 2027.

The council must deliver a minimum of 730 units under Housing For All by the end of 2026.

‘ABYSMAL’

SPEAKING at the council’s April meeting, Fine Gael county councillor Peter Flynn described the local authority’s record on housing as ‘an abysmal failure’.

The Westport-based representative took aim at the amount of land acquired by the council for housing, the number properties acquired by CPO and the number of loans and local authority loans issued.

“‘Housing Delivery’ is the heading of the report, but it should be really ‘Housing Failure’,” Cllr Flynn remarked.

“If you look at the last five years, our population in Mayo has increased in and around the estimate of 10,000 people. If you look at the delivery in terms of numbers, I mean it’s an abysmal failure on our behalf.

“We have facilitated that number of 10,000 people coming into the county and yet on the other side of that we have done nothing to counteract and try and help people get through rental or any other schemes.

“The numbers speak for themselves. We have built 291 houses over a five-year period. That’s less than 60 houses per year. In the bad days of the town council, when there was no money, a single town council would have delivered…those types of numbers.”

Cllr Flynn described the number of local authority loans issued by Mayo County Council – 65 since 2020 – as ‘mind-boggling’.

Commenting on the amount of land acquired by the council for housing, Cllr Flynn said the council needed to be buying ‘hundreds of acres’ for affordable sites and affordable housing.

The council currently has five sites in Mayo ‘that have been purchased or at an advanced stage of acquisition’ for housing.

The subject of housing was discussed by local representatives for almost two hours at the council’s recent meeting.

Cllr Mark Duffy (Independent) said it was ‘disgraceful’ that 16 council-owned houses were currently vacant in Ballina despite there being 183 people on the housing list in his area.

CONTRACTOR SHORTAGE

RESPONDING to concerns from county councillors, the local authority’s Director of Services for housing insisted that progress was being made on the issue.

_{Tom Gilligan, Mayo County Council's Director of Services for Housing}

Tom Gilligan said Mayo County Council ‘didn’t do that bad’ with housing in 2023 compared to other local authorities.

Mr Gilligan said that the delay in occupying 16 vacant social houses in Ballina was due to a shortage of available contractors.

He estimated that the local authority would approve between 18 and 20 loans by the end of the year but said that he would like to see more applications.

Catherine McConnell, Mayo County Council’s Director of Services for Planning, said that a ‘strong pipeline’ of housing is due to come on stream in Mayo.

Mayo County Council received a total of 1,264 planning applications in 2023.

Of these, 72 percent were granted, while 5 percent were refused. The remainder are going through the planning process (12 percent), are incomplete (5 percent), are Section 5 declarations (4 percent) or were withdrawn (2 percent).

A total of 389 planning applications for single houses were granted in 2023-2024, according to the council’s ‘Housing Delivery: Planning and Housing Update’ report.

Mayo County Council has also approved 277 applications for the Croí Cónaithe grant scheme for refurbishing vacant properties. Twenty-six of these – a maximum of up to €70,000 per grant – have been paid out.

Approximately 100 homeless people are accessing emergency accommodation in Mayo at present, while 1,037 people are on Mayo County Council’s social housing list. The county does not officially have any rough sleepers.

FAILURE

ELSEWHERE, Mayo TD Michael Ring said that Mayo County Council had ‘failed the people of Mayo on housing’.

“The council has taken up every available property for Ukrainians and other people coming to this country, and people cannot get houses as a result,” the former government minister said at the launch of Fine Gael’s local election campaign in Straide.

Beneficiaries of Temporary Protection from Ukraine and International Protection Applicants are entitled to State accommodation but do not qualify for social housing.