CITY TRIBUNE
‘Fairer system’ for people on Galway City Council housing list
A new online system of allocating social housing in Galway that came into being this month aims to give more choice to people who are on the city’s waiting list.
Galway City Council hopes that Choice Based Letting (CBL), which went live on April 7, will help streamline the process of allocating homes.
The local authority also expects that the new system will cut out the number of refusals of homes offered to applicants in the waiting list.
“It is another layer in the system of allocating houses but it should make the allocation system run a lot more smoothly,” explained Helena Martyn, Senior Executive Officer of the City Council’s Housing Department.
Households on the city housing waiting list were written to in December and January alerting them to CBL, including people on Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) and RAS (Rental Accommodation Scheme). Some 3,638 qualified housing applicants were sent CBL information packs, and as of last week, some 45% of users registered and logged on.
They have been given unique usernames and passwords to log onto the system, where they can register an interest in Council properties that are available.
Just two homes were added to the online portal when it was launched, and a further 23 three-bed homes in the new estate of Ballyburke in Knocknacarra went ‘live’ this week.
But the list is due to be updated regularly, and Ms Martyn hopes that new estates currently being developed will be added, along with voids and houses of approved housing bodies.
Helena Martyn told the Galway City Tribune that the system should be good for staff and for clients of the City Council on the waiting list.
“We hope it will improve the system and speed it up but we have to wait and see. It is a positive. We have people who are genuinely interested in properties and we can’t offer them to them (under the previous system) because they are not long enough on the list whereas this way, they can express an interest.
“It’s fairer. We’re not going through a list of people who don’t want the property, and time is wasted on sending out offers that are refused four or five times. That’s frustrating for the staff and there’s a lot of paperwork involved,” she said.
People should be aware that under the new system, if they express an interest in a house, and are offered that house but refuse it, then they are thrown off the housing list for 12 months.
“The big thing is to bring down the number of refusals. That’s where we hope to get a win here – people are choosing houses they actually want to go in. It’s giving people more choice rather than us picking the property for them.
“It’s still a time-based system. If we get 20 expressions of interest for one property, we still have to go through the criteria. The person waiting 11 years is obviously going to get it ahead of someone who just went on the list yesterday.
“The idea is you’d have a person who is genuinely interested in it. If we make an offer to a person who has expressed an interest in taking a property, and if they then refuse to take up that offer, then they are suspended from the housing waiting list for a year.
“Automatically you will not be offered another property, so really if you are going to make a bid on a property, you need to make sure you’re not just doing it for the craic,” Ms Martyn said.
One fear of the new system is that it might exclude people who are not computer literate. In these cases, particularly with older people, Ms Martyn said that housing stock will be held back to offer outside of this system.
“We will have to keep an eye on that to ensure that people are engaging with the process because if they aren’t, we’ll need to contact them to find out if they are interested in Choice Based Letting, or are they aware of it or is there some reason they can’t access it.
“We’re piloting it and we’ll review it again in three months to see how it is progressing,” added Ms Martyn.
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
The new Salmon Weir pedestrian and cycle bridge will be officially opened to the public next Friday, May 26.
Work on the €10 million bridge got underway in April 2022, before the main structure was hoisted into place in early December.
A lunchtime tape-cutting ceremony will take place on Friday, as the first pedestrians and cyclists traverse the as-yet-unnamed bridge.
The Chief Executive of Galway City Council, Brendan McGrath, previously said the bridge, once opened, would remove existing conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and traffic “as well as facilitating the Cross-City Link public transport corridor over the existing 200-year-old bridge”.
The naming of the new bridge has been under discussion by the Council’s Civic Commemorations Committee since late last year.
One name that has been in the mix for some time is that of the first woman in Europe to graduate with an engineering degree – Alice Perry.
Ms Perry, who was from Wellpark, graduated from Queen’s College Galway (now University of Galway) in 1906. The university’s engineering building is named in her honour.
The bridge was built by Jons Civil Engineering firm in County Meath and was assembled off-site before being transported to Galway. Funding for the project was provided in full by the National Transport Authority and the European Regional Development Fund.
(Photo: Sheila Gallagher captured the city’s new pedestrian footbridge being raised on the south side of the Salmon Weir Bridge in December. It will officially open next Friday, May 26).
From the Galway City Tribune – Minister of State for Local Government and Planning, Kieran O’Donnell was labelled a “disgrace” for overturning councillors’ decisions to rezone land in the new City Development Plan.
Minister O’Donnell (pictured) confirmed in a letter to Council Chief Executive Brendan McGrath last week that he was reversing 25 material alternations made by councillors to the CDP 2023-29. He made the decision on the advice of Office of Planning Regulator (OPR).
Minister O’Donnell directed that 14 land parcels that were subject to land-use zoning changes by councillors as part of the Material Alterations to the Draft CDP should be reversed.
He directed that a further 11 land parcels in the city should become “unzoned”.
The Minister found that the CDP had not been made in a manner consistent with recommendations of the OPR, which required specific changes to the plan to ensure consistency with the national planning laws and guidelines.
At last week’s Council meeting Cllr Eddie Hoare (FG) asked for clarity on the process by which councillors could rezone the lands that had been changed by the Minister’s direction.
Cllr Declan McDonnell said, “What he [Minister O’Donnell] has done is an absolute disgrace”.
And he asked: “Do we have to have another development plan meeting to deal with it?”
Both Cllrs Hoare and McDonnell wondered what would become of the lands that were rezoned or unzoned by the ministerial direction.
Mr McGrath said the Council had put forward an argument in favour of retaining the material alterations in the plan, but ultimately the Minister sided with OPR.
He said if councillors want to make alterations to the new plan, they could go through the process of making a material alteration but this was lengthy.
The Save Roscam Peninsula campaign welcomed the Minister’s decision.
In a statement to the Galway City Tribune, it said the direction would mean the Roscam village area on the Roscam Peninsula will be unzoned and a number of land parcels would revert back to agriculture/high amenity.
A spokesperson for the campaign said: “the material alterations made by city councillors following lobbying by developers continued the long-standing practice of councillors facilitating a developer-led plan rather than an evidence- and policy-based plan that meets the needs of the city.
“The Minister’s direction is an important step in restoring confidence in the planning system. It is clear from the City Council’s own evidence on future housing projections that there was no requirement to zone these lands for residential purposes in order to meet the needs of the targeted population increase up to 2029,” the spokesperson added.
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