Call for action on empty houses

Nenagh councillors have called for repair works on empty council houses to be speeded up so that people facing the threat of homelessness can be accommodated.

Speaking at the October meeting of the Municipal District authority, Cllr Joe Hannigan said he was very concerned in relation to the rate empty houses were being brought back into use. He had received representations from a couple of people currently in rented property, who had received notices to quit from early in January next. He wanted to know when empty houses owned by the council were going to be available because he could not see them being ready by the time when they would be badly needed for people facing homelessness. The people he was talking to were looking at two empty houses in an estate. They were willing to do up the houses themselves if they could get them. They did not understand why it was taking so long for the council to do the necessary works to make them habitable.

“Whatever we do between now and December we have to pull out all the stops to get voids done for people in need,” said Cllr Hannigan. He wondered if the council had been allocated enough funds by the government to bring its empty houses back into use. The council's finance officer Liam McCarthy said there was a finite amount of funds in the budget to bring houses back into use. Approximately €1 million would be spent by the council next year on tackling these voids.

Cllr Michael O' Meara said it was taking longer than he liked to bring empty houses back into use. He wondered if the council had enough staff on the ground to carry out the necessary works. It seemed to be taking a long time in many cases. This was not good enough at a time when many people were in dire straits for housing. It would help if voids could be tackled quickly. Director Marcus O' Connor said the council made a lot of progress on tackling voids in recent years. However, a staffing issue due to an engineer moving on had resulted in a slowdown in works. It was expected to make improvements on the rate at which voids are tackled. would soon be evident.

"We made very good progress on voids, but it did drop back a bit and we have taken steps to address that, and you will see improvements. You should see a very rapid decrease in the number of voids," said Mr O' Conn or

Cllr Seamus Morris said works seemed be tackled more swiftly by the council years ago when its own staff had more involvement. Now many of the works went to tender and took longer.