Councils under fire over state of housing

Local authorities are facing a dressing-down from the housing minister for leaving thousands of homes lying idle while housing waiting lists remain at crisis levels.

Jan O’Sullivan is providing funds to refurbish 952 local authority dwellings that have fallen into disrepair while vacant, in order that they can be re-let.

The breakdown of the €15m grants scheme was revealed yesterday, with the largest sums going to Dublin City Council for the repair of 135 homes; Cork City Council, 94 homes; Fingal County Council, 95; and Cork County Council, 68.

Public representatives around the country gave a warm welcome to the grants, which will be welcome news for some of the 90,000-plus households on waiting lists for local authority homes. However, more than 2,500 other local authority properties are lying empty and the minister said the situation was not acceptable at a time when so many families needed housing.

Ms O’Sullivan said she would ask questions of senior management in charge of housing at local level.

“In addition to providing funding, we also need to examine management practice in local authorities so that we avoid the build-up of long-term vacant units,” said Ms O’Sullivan.

“I will be meeting the directors of housing of all local authorities in the coming week and this issue will be prominent on my agenda.”

The most recent figures from the Local Government Management Agency show that, on average, 3% of local authorities were empty at any given time in 2012 and 75% were not fit to re-let.

On average, it took four and a half months to get repairs carried out and a further five weeks before the properties were re-let, although in some cases it took close to a year.

The serious state of disrepair for some houses is evident from the grants, which reveal it will cost as much as €30,000 per house to fix homes in Louth and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. Major repairs are also needed in Co Kilkenny, where the cost per unit is €24,733; Dublin City, €24,355; Wexford, €23,595, and Meath, €22,909.

Ms O’Sullivan said the funding would transform some communities that had been blighted by vacant houses for years.

However, People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett criticised the scheme as an election stunt designed to cover-up to the true extent of the growing housing and homelessness crisis.

“The absolutely paltry sum of €15m announced by the Minister O’Sullivan today will not even dent a crisis where 96,000 families are on the housing list, waiting up to 15 years, and record numbers of families declaring as homeless,” he said.