Woman sleeps in car – as houses lie empty nearby

A woman has to sleep in her car in a relative’s back yard – when there are dozens of empty houses on her doorstep.

But while homes in some areas are vacant and falling into disrepair, only two Local Authority houses has been built in the Ballinasloe municipal area in the past three years.

And that has left local councillors frustrated at the lack of central funding available to address the growing waiting list across the county which currently stands at 3,000 applicants.

Cllr Dermot Connolly told the Ballinasloe Municipal District meeting that in all his years as a public representative, he had never experienced the likes of it.

He stressed that the case of the woman sleeping in a car was an extreme case but he was all too aware of young couples struggling to pay private rents, if they were lucky enough to get a house to rent, and unable to save enough to meet the criteria to secure a mortgage.

And of course, they were also not meeting the criteria for getting a local authority house, not there were any new units being made available by Galway County Council.

He said that only 14 such units had been provided in the whole county in the past three years, two of them in the Ballinasloe area.

“I have come across some difficult cases but there are no houses available and I was wondering when we are going to have an overview of the situation.

“Despite the work of a number of voluntary housing agencies, we have a housing crisis. We are in a very serious situation — we had promises but nothing was delivered,” he said.

Cllr Michael Connolly said there was a number of problem with housing but he wondered if the Council could do something to encourage the use of vacant private houses to meet the housing demand.

He gave the example of Cooloo National School where the number of pupils were diminishing when there were at least ten unoccupied houses in the vicinity.

“These houses have been closed up for different reasons, mostly because the last occupants died.

“We are just not getting the funding to provide housing for those on the waiting list and making unoccupied houses available to bring people into the locality would solve a few problems,” he said.

There were a number of local authority houses also vacant but the Council wasn’t acting quickly enough in refurbishing them and meanwhile they were being stripped by a certain element, he added.

Cllr Connolly said by the time the Council did get around to fixing them up it was costing up to €30,000 instead of a few thousand euros.

Cllr Tim Broderick said they were being dictated to by central funds. Twice last year, he said, he had brought in a couple who wanted to get onto the property ladder but hoped for a start from the Council but in each case they didn’t meet the criteria for a council house.

Director of Services, Catherine McConnell said she could organise that the Director of Services for Housing speak to the councillors.