Sixteen council-owned homes are lying vacant in Mayo town

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 believes there are issues obtaining the required funding to bring the houses back to a habitable state.

“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,” he said. “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.” 

The Fine Gael councillor said 16 families could be accommodated and the houses should be occupied.

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 is 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 as opposed to having to go up the ladder (looking for funding?)," he added.

Mayo Co Council's Director of Services for Housing Tom Gilligan said he believed there had been a reasonable performance on housing in Mayo compared to other county councils. He stressed the reason 16 homes are vacant and unoccupied is because a shortage of contractors has had an impact on completing the work.