FG left with red faces as member sells apartments to city council

WHILE Fine Gael members of Limerick County Council were waging a campaign against social housing in Limerick city suburbs, one of the party’s councillors was finalising a huge deal to sell suburban apartments to Limerick City Council for people on their housing list, it emerged last night.

The party has been left red-faced after its opposition to social housing was thrown into chaos.

Fine Gael councillors on the county authority have been ratcheting up a campaign against the city council buying properties in county authority-controlled suburbs.

But yesterday it emerged the city council has done a deal with a leading Fine Gael county councillor for the purchase of six apartments in the suburbs.

The city council confirmed it has agreed to buy six new apartments for€1.5 million from Richard Butler.

A spokesman for the city council said: “We have signed off on the purchase of apartments from Mr Butler for €1.5m. We are awaiting the documents from the solicitors.”

The apartments are built in a single block on Dooradoyle Road near the Garryowen rugby ground, outside the city boundary.

Mr Butler was not contactable yesterday.

His mobile number was giving a message in Spanish. He is understood to have property interests in Spain where he travels frequently.

Mr Butler’s brother Robert is one of Limerick’s foremost property figures and has been responsible for extensive developments in the city and county.

The city council intends to allocate the apartments purchased from Mr Butler to people currently on its waiting list for social housing.

The Fine Gael leader on the county council Patrick O’Donovan has led the party’s opposition to houses being bought up in their area for city council social housing.

Mr O’Donovan said earlier this week: “If there is a house waiting list in Limerick City Council’s administrative area, I can’t understand why they are going outside their own jurisdiction to solve it. I don’t think it is good practice to go into another local authorities functional area.”

Another FG member of the county council has been even more trenchant in his criticism of the city council buying private property in the county suburban area for social housing.

Leo Walsh, who lives in Raheen, where the city council plans to buy houses, said: “You have working couples breaking their backsides trying to pay for their houses and then someone comes along and gets a free house next door to them. It’s not right. We have lobbied at council level but hopefully it’s not gone too far to stop.”