16 council homes are lying vacant in Ballina

Local representatives have said it is “a disgrace” that 16 council-owned houses are lying empty in Ballina.

Cllr Jarlath Munnelly told last week’s meeting of Mayo County Council that he understands there are difficulties in obtaining funding to refurbish the homes.

“That is simply not good enough. We have a housing crisis and we have 16 empty council houses in Ballina. Like everybody else here, I am getting representations about them,” said Cllr Munnelly. “Never mind talking about building new houses, there are empty houses here, too many of them, and if we do not spend money now repairing those houses they will cost more money.”

There are officially 183 people on the housing waiting list in the Ballina Municipal District but Independent Cllr Mark Duffy believes the “true figure” is much higher. He described the current situation as “disgraceful”.

“Just last week alone, I had two incidents of people who were made homeless. They were born and raised in the town, who were sleeping rough in the town and are crying out for accommodation,” he said. “We are told we have all the money in the world, but there are 16 houses that are crying out for investment to retrofit them and bring them back into use.”

Cllr Duffy said “serious questions” need to be answered by the council as there is such a high demand for housing.

“How is there not a rolling fund all of the time so that when we need it, it is there."

The council's Director of Services for Housing Tom Gilligan said the 16 homes are vacant because a shortage of building contractors to do the work.

Later in the week, at a meeting of Ballina Municipal Council, Cllr Michael Loftus asked Mr Gilligan why funds raised from sale of council properties cannot be put towards bringing the 16 vacant homes back into use.

“We got €1.3 million from the sale of Volex, €140,000 from the sale of Crossmolina Fire Station. Our head of finance Peter Duggan said this money could go into this year’s budget. Some of that money should be used for the 16 vacant houses.” 

However, Mr Gilligan said the housing repair budget had been adopted for this year and it would not be possible to divert money into it from other sources. 

Cllr Jarlath Munnelly said that some of the vacant houses may have asbestos and will require costlier specialist work to bring them up to standard. He suggested the council lend money to repair the houses and use the current budget of €253,000 to begin paying back that loan. He also called on Mr Gilligan to quantify the cost of repairing the 16 houses in conjunction with the Chief Executive Kevin Kelly.