Almost 1,600 on council housing waiting in Laois
There were 1,596 applicants on Laois County Council's housing list at the end of March
AT THE recent meeting of Laois County Council, chief executive Michael Rainey stated that among the 1,596 applicants on the housing list at the end of March, 20 single people and six families presented as homeless to the local authority. He also said that 33 single people and nine families from Laois were in emergency accommodation.
During the meeting, cllr Marie Tuohy proposed that housing minister James Brown attend a council meeting in Laois ‘to outline plans and policies to tackle the chronic shortage of housing, the repeated failure to meet housing targets and to deal with the ongoing systemic impediments to providing new homes leading to the ongoing housing and homelessness across the country’.
She said: “Housing remains the biggest single issue and concern in the country today. It is the dominant issue for an entire generation and unless we come up with solutions they will soon be a lost generation.
“The housing issue casts a long shadow. It’s far more than bricks and mortar and it is having a profound impact on so many other aspects of people’s lives. It’s not just about having a roof over your head, a safe haven, an address of your own, although these things, too, are extremely important. But it’s about a chance to own your own home. A chance to start a family if you want to, building communities, committing to a career and about investing in every possible way in your future.
“This is not a criticism of our housing department in Laois County Council,” said cllr Tuohy.
“Far from it. They are doing their best with limited resources. It’s like trying to perform the miracle of the loaves and the fishes every week.”
Commending Mr Rainey, she said: “In his previous role in Laois as director of services for housing he was dynamic and proactive; unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the government.
“This isn’t meant to be cheap political point scoring, but it is safe to say that this government has gotten off to a shocking bad start and nowhere is that more obvious than in the area of housing. They are all over the shop, floundering and failing an entire generation. Many who are stuck at home in their parents’ homes are well into their 30s, or they are hitting the road to Australia and elsewhere. No wonder we are unable to recruit and retain our gardaí, teachers, nurses and doctors. The lack of housing is at the heart of these problems.”
Cllr Tuohy said: “Then there is the absolute tragedy of homelessness. This week it’s at an all-time high with 15,418 in emergency accommodation, 4,675 of them children.
“The new minister for housing is talking about the issue as if it was a new problem. This is not a new problem. Ten years ago, Leo Varadkar said the housing situation was a national emergency. This government has been continuously in power for the last ten years.”
“Airbnb is not the problem, or a migrant walking down the canal with all their worldly belongings in a plastic bag. They are not the problem. The ESRI itself rubbished these suggestions in their report this week. The problem is systemic. The problem is getting worse and the problem has festered for ten years.”
“Now the new minister and the government, who have had more plans, targets, policies and housing strategies than they have built houses, have another plan: appoint a housing ‘tsar’. Is this just another buffer between themselves and the problem,” asked the Portlaoise councillor?
“The solution in my mind,” said cllr Tuohy, “is build more council houses. Go back to what the Labour and Fianna Fáil governments did in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, when the country hadn’t a penny, and stop farming out the responsibility, stop looking for approved housing bodies or the private sector to do it.
“It’s a simple supply and demand issue and the government is not adding any housing stock to the supply but looking for others to do it for them. And then wondering why they have repeatedly failed to meet a single housing target for a decade, while conceding that even the targets themselves are inadequate in the first instance.”
“That’s why,” said cllr Tuohy, “I want to invite the minister for housing, deputy Brown, to address this council, because I'd love to hear directly from himself what he plans to do, other than appointing a housing tsar.”
Seconding the motion, cllr Caroline Dwane Stanley said the call for the minister to attend a meeting in Laois “does not reflect on this council. We are one of the countries that are very good at bringing on stream our social housing stock. Obviously we don’t have enough for our growing population, with Portlaoise the fastest-growing population outside of Dublin. The more houses we’re building, the more we need. The national picture is very poor and very sad for those waiting to get on a housing list.”
She said what is needed are not just social houses but cost-rental and affordable housing schemes.
“The middle of last year, a newly-built house in the Kilminchy area was priced at about €350,000. The new houses up around the Holy Family school are coming in at around €500,000. There’s absolutely no hope there for a young couple. People in their 30s, in their own homes and in good jobs, will never be able to afford their own house because of house prices like that.
“It seems like the more we build, the more we’re feeding this monster private entity. If we look back to the old affordable housing scheme that was rolled out 20 years ago in Laois, it was absolutely brilliant. I’d love to see councils building their own houses again.”
