10,000-plus seek a home from Galway City Council

WELL over 10,000 men, women and children without a home have now been sucked into Galway City’s housing waiting list crisis, a city councillor claimed last night.

Cllr Catherine Connolly told the City Council meeting that the 3,597 applicants on the official housing waiting list translated into a figure of between 10,000 and 12,000 parents and children seeking accommodation.

“What has happened under this Labour government is that we have returned to the days of the landlord class. Since 1999, different governments have presided over the destruction of the basic human right of housing,” said Cllr Connolly.

Sinn Féin councillor, Mairead Farrell, said that the problem of absentee landlords had to be tackled while Cllr Declan McDonnell said that many landlords weren’t taking part in the RAS (Rental Accommodation Scheme) because they didn’t want to pay tax.

The City Council’s June, 2014, Housing Report was presented to councillors at their meeting last evening, indicating that there were were now 3,597 people on the housing waiting list.

The report also stated that with the population of the city due to exceed the 80,000 mark in four years’ time, a further 2,635 housing units would need to be provided to meet demand between 2015 and 2018.

Over 3,000 (or 80% of the total on the waiting list) were seeking accommodation in the one or two bedroom categories but according to some councillors these smaller units just weren’t available.

Cllr Padráig Conneely accused the Council of ignoring the ‘elephant in the room’, referring to what he described as the suspension of two senior officials in the housing department because of ‘irregularities in the allocation of houses’.

“It’s these higher officials that have let the system down – it has dented confidence in the system,” said Cllr Conneely.

Councillors also heard that 269 people had presented themselves as homeless last year with a number of priority areas identified by the City Council housing staff to address this problem.

Read more in this week’s Connacht Sentinel