20 families reject council housing offers three times

Hundreds of offers of local authority accommodation are being rejected for reasons including location and type of housing — with 20 people refusing three offers each last year in one council area.

Figures provided to the Irish Examiner by all four local authorities in Dublin, as well as Cork, Galway, and Limerick city councils, show the location of the property is often cited as reason for refusal, while 20 people in Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown refused offers of housing three times in 2012.

The largest number of refusals in 2012 was in Dublin City, where 1,138 of 1,398 housing offers were accepted in 2012, meaning 260 offers were not accepted.

Dublin City Council did not provide a breakdown of the reasons for refusal, but said in previous years that, in some cases, the location of the accommodation and issues over its proximity to family were often cited.

Cork City had the second highest number of refusals, with 225. The main reason given — 130 cases last year — was that the applicant no longer wishes to be considered for the area they have specified.

A council spokesperson said: “It is important to note that no applicant receives an offer of accommodation in an area that they did not previously specify.”

Other reasons for rejecting an offer included the applicant failing to contact the office in relation to an offer (19 cases); the applicant wanting bigger accommodation (25 cases); the applicant saying they no longer wanted housing (23 cases); the house being deemed unsuitable (13 cases); or the applicant saying they were only interested in a house rather than an apartment (15 cases).

In Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown, a total of 174 offers were refused by 150 households, while in South Dublin there were 147 refusals last year, including 24 second refusals.

A spokesperson for DLR Co Co said: “In the period from 1st January 2011 to 31st December 2012, a total of 20 applicants refused three or more offers of accommodation.

“Some refuse offers of one-bedroom accommodation as they want two-bedroom accommodation even though they have been assessed as having a one-bedroom requirement.”

In the Limerick City Council area, there were nine refusals of housing offers last year, with seven refusals related to the location of the property.

In Fingal, in north and west Dublin, there were 165 refusals last year.