Row over cause of carnage at estate

SCORCHED earth where piles of rubbish were burned. Heaps of debris, tyres, and dozens of white goods’ carcases, lay strewn on the pathway.

Homes ransacked of copper wiring and pipes, and kitchen ranges. Doors burned, windows smashed and roof slates missing.

It sounds like a scene from a war-zone . . . but it’s not; it’s a City Council-owned Traveller-specific group housing scheme and it’s mostly in a state of disrepair.

These photographs – taken last month by a drone hired by Galway City Councillor Noel Larkin (Ind) – show damaged homes in Fána Glas estate in Ballybane, and an adjacent field.

At least five – possibly six – of the eight homes in the cul-de-sac are uninhabitable. One is completely razed to the ground, its roof collapsed and debris from the inside bulging out from the gaps where windows and doors used to be. Four more properties are boarded up; and at least four homes have roof slates missing.

Cllr Larkin said the photographs depicted the “wanton destruction” of houses that were built with public money. He estimated that some €2 million worth of “damage and destruction” was caused to the properties – “an utter disgrace” given the huge number of people deemed homeless and on the City Council’s housing waiting list.

“If someone came into Galway and robbed €2 million in a bank heist, it’d be all over the news, but here you have €2 million worth of damage caused to public property, that’s €2 million of taxpayers’ money, and there isn’t a word about it,” fumed Cllr Larkin.

“This atrocious lack of respect for Council property beggars belief,” he said.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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