Mayo council house left vacant for 962 days

A Mayo County Council house was left vacant for 962 days – more than two and a half years – before it was returned to the authority’s available housing stock, newly released Freedom of Information (FOI) figures have revealed.

The property was vacated on December 12, 2022, but was not re-tenanted until July 31, 2025. The lengthy vacancy is the longest identified in the FOI information request and comes as Mayo County Council faces continued pressure to maximise the use of existing housing stock amid demand for social housing.

Westport Fine Gael councillor Peter Flynn said the length of time the property remained empty was 'shocking'.

“To be honest, that's even worse than I would have ever imagined. The whole process is so complicated,” he said.

The FOI figures show that the 962-day vacancy was not an isolated case.

One council property was vacant for 595 days, from February 29, 2024, until October 16, 2025, while another remained empty for 577 days, between March 15, 2024, and October 13, 2025.

A further property was vacant for 524 days, from February 22, 2024, until July 30, 2025.

Other properties listed in the council's response were vacant for 498, 413, 392, 356, 349, 322 and 302 days.

The figures were released in response to an FOI request from The Mayo News seeking details of council properties that had been vacated before subsequently being re-tenanted.

While some properties were returned to use within weeks, others remained outside the available housing stock for many months.

Based on the individual properties listed in the FOI response, the average vacancy period was approximately 43.45 weeks, with the records covering vacancies from December 12, 2022, to November 27, 2025.

Complex system blamed for delays

Cllr Flynn said the delays are partly due to a complicated system in which responsibility for vacant and derelict properties has historically been spread across different sections of the council.

“There have been so many sections involved in Mayo County Council in the past with a little bit of responsibility for vacancy and dereliction, and really it was awful hard to figure out who was ultimately responsible for it,” he said.

He said establishing a dedicated dereliction unit was 'a positive development'.

“The good news is it's one of the things that we have pushed hard on coming out of our Housing Special Policy Committee (SPC) - that there would be a more integrated approach to dealing with dereliction.

“Now there is a dedicated unit that's just been set up in the last number of months to deal with dereliction, so everything falls within this group - the planning of it, the notices that go out, the follow-up on it, any kind of checks that need to be done in terms of property registration and all the rest of it. At least now we're seeing a little bit of progress on that side of it.”

However, Cllr Flynn said there are still significant problems when it comes to getting council-owned properties refurbished and returned to tenants.

He said municipal districts are responsible for dealing with derelict properties but do not have direct control over the budgets needed to carry out the work.

“That one makes no sense whatsoever,” he said.

“The responsibility for derelict property falls within the municipal district, but the problem that the municipal district has is they don't have any budgets to carry out the work.”

According to Cllr Flynn, municipal districts must rely on Housing Central and the Director of Housing to release funding.

“They can go around in circles for months normally before they get the final approval for their work to be done.”

Further delays

Even after funding is approved, he said the council faces further delays because it no longer has its own dedicated housing maintenance teams.

“When they do get the final approval, unfortunately Mayo County Council no longer has its own dedicated housing staff to carry out the necessary works.”

He compared the current system with the days of the former town councils, when local authorities employed their own tradespeople.

“I compare that to the town council days where they had their own electrician, their own plumber, their own carpenter, their own general maintenance people. We don't have that anymore.”

Instead, he said, work has to be outsourced, creating another layer of procurement and tendering.

“Then you go back into the whole tendering process and everything that goes with it. That can take forever. Trying to get a tradesperson at the moment is really, really difficult. It's a really convoluted process,” he said.

The shortage of tradespeople is also contributing to delays, Cllr Flynn said.

“Given the shortage of tradespeople in the country at the moment, the council is facing the same challenges as every other individual, and that's a real difficulty.”

Despite those challenges, Cllr Flynn said the 962-day vacancy was impossible to justify.

“I mean, that's negligence on behalf of the council,” he said.

He said a six-month turnaround would previously have been considered relatively normal, but admitted he would be surprised if vacant properties could currently be brought back into use within that timeframe.

“I'd honestly be surprised if it turned around in six months at the moment.”

He said the main problems were the lack of local control over funding and the requirement to outsource the work.

“There are two reasons. One is that the municipal district doesn't have the budget. They have to go back to Housing Central and Finance to get the money approved.”

“Two is that the process, instead of having your own team to go off and do the work, has to be outsourced to an external company. Then they have to go through the whole tendering process. They're reliant on the company to come back as quickly as possible.”

Calls for council tradespeople to return

Cllr Flynn believes Mayo County Council should consider bringing key maintenance work back in-house.

“The obvious solution to it is that the council has its own team, have their own electrician, plumber, carpenter, all the different key trades that are required.”

He said that would eliminate the need to tender individual jobs and could significantly speed up the process.

“Going back to a model that was working 20 years ago, instead of this really daft process where everything now is outsourced. If we had our own team, there's no need to tender for anything. The only thing that needs to be sourced is the materials, and everything can be done in-house and turned around. I go back to the town council days - our houses used to be turned around in six to eight weeks.”

He also questioned whether the current system represents value for money for the council.

“Not at all. They're absolutely getting no value for money. Once you go externally with anything, you're then at the behest of external people to give you the best value,” he said.

Cllr Flynn said council employment could also offer tradespeople greater job security.

“Tradespeople would be very happy to work for the security of a job. They know they're getting paid every Friday.”

‘Get people off the waiting list’

Cllr Flynn said the ultimate priority should be getting vacant properties back into use as quickly as possible.

“It's just a system. It is so convoluted. If we had a simple process to turn around what the council calls ‘voids’, we could do this in six to eight weeks if we went back to where we were in the town council days.

“It's as simple as that,” he said.

He said giving municipal districts greater control over funding, combined with an in-house maintenance team, could remove many of the delays.

“Where you have your own team in-house to carry out the work, you bypass all the other issues. Have the budget sitting with the municipal districts, and then you bypass all the issues, you get the houses returned around quickly, and you get people off the waiting list.”

95 council units vacant

Mayo County Council confirmed that approximately 95 units were vacant as of December 31, 2025.

However, the council said it could not provide a retrospective breakdown showing how long those properties had been vacant.

An administrative officer in the council's Central Housing section said its iHouse vacant housing report is a live report and therefore could not be accessed retrospectively.

Cllr Flynn also questioned whether the official figures fully capture the number of properties sitting empty.

He said some properties may not immediately be classified as official ‘voids’ when tenants leave.

“Some of them aren't actually classified as voids because people have vacated homes and they haven't notified the council. They don't become official voids until all of the paperwork is carried out.”

He believes this could mean both the number of vacant properties and the actual time they spend empty are being understated.

“The turnaround time would be a hell of a lot higher as well, because if you were to register from the date the house is vacated to the actual point when it becomes a void, I can guarantee this month has elapsed in that particular situation.”

He also questioned whether some properties that have been vacant and derelict for years would appear on the council's list at all.

Mayo has 2,665 council homes

The latest figures from the National Oversight and Audit Commission's (NOAC) Local Authority Performance Indicator Report 2025 show that Mayo County Council had 2,665 local-authority-owned dwellings at December 31, 2025.

The council had 2,547 dwellings at the beginning of 2025, added 135 properties during the year, sold 17, and demolished none.

NOAC recorded a 3.56 percent vacancy rate for Mayo's local-authority housing stock at the end of 2025.

The latest NOAC figures show that Mayo County Council's average time to re-let a vacant council property was 41.49 weeks in 2025.

NOAC defines the measure as the time between a dwelling being vacated and being re-tenanted, averaged across dwellings re-let during the year.

The average cost of re-letting a dwelling in Mayo during 2025 was €17,431.29.

Nationally, the average re-letting time was 32.08 weeks in 2025, meaning Mayo's recorded average was 9.41 weeks longer.

NOAC's report shows that the national average had fallen from 35.56 weeks in 2024 to 32.08 weeks in 2025. A press query was sent to Mayo County Council, but no response was received by the time of publication.