Cllr Ó Súilleabháin slams D’Arcy over housing remarks
Gorey councillor Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin has slammed Minister Michael D’Arcy’s recent remarks on the housing crisis however Minister D’Arcy has hit back telling him to ‘stop playing politics’.
Following a recent interview by Minister D’Arcy on South East Radio Cllr Ó Súilleabháin said some of Minister D’Arcy’s comments appeared to lay blame for the housing crisis at the door of the council, whom the Junior Minister claimed lacked the expertise to solve the problem.
‘The cause of this crisis is government housing policy, both past and present, full stop’, said Cllr. Ó Súilleabháin.
‘There are currently 738 families waiting for housing in Gorey District and 2,813 countywide.
‘While progress is being made by Approved Housing Bodies (AHB’s) and through the new HAP scheme, the actual social housing building programme is hitting a brick wall. Construction of the traditional council house is the proper way to go, as opposed to an over-reliance on the private sector and the HAP scheme. With construction everyone wins – builders, plumbers, plasterers, electricians, carpenters, shopkeepers etc.’
However when contacted Minister D’Arcy said that he didn’t single out Wexford County Council. ‘What I questioned was the capacity within all Local Authorities, not just Wexford although I did use that as an example, to build large local authority housing estates in Ireland.
‘The corporate knowledge that was there in local authorities isn’t there any more because of retirements.
‘The lack of housing is a really serious issues and we are all trying to get movement and get houses built. If Cllr Ó Súilleabháin wants to take issues with my comments he obviously has no interest in housing and getting houses built. He just wants to get make a political dig.’
Minister D’Arcy said there is a fund of €6 billion available nationally to local authorities to build houses and this would go some way to solving the housing problem. However he said it wasn’t a case of the Government just handing over the money to local authorities without a proper plan in place.
‘There needs to be a process involved. The money is there.’
He said that local authorities need to identify suitable lands to build estates on before coming up with a design and price per unit.
‘We need to have a proper procurement process to ensure value for money. If a developer is saying a house on one side of town costs 40 per cent more than a similar house on the other side of town then questions have to be asked and answered.’
‘We have to maximise the money to get the best value to ensure the maximum number of houses are built to help ease the crisis.’
He said the moratorium on building local authority houses is over and that its up to local authorities to utilise the money there.
Minister D’Arcy said it would be more constructive if Cllr Ó Súilleabháin concentrated on the housing crisis at hand and stop playing politics on the issue.
Cllr Ó Súilleabháin added: ‘Due to the housing policy of Minister Darcy’s government there is a long and torturous bureaucratic route over roughly 18 months before a single block can be laid, and which involves six separate and long-drawn out stages, with each individual stage having to be painstakingly approved by the government before the council is allowed to progress to the next one. The time has now come when we need to declare an official State of Emergency in relation to housing and homelessness so that this nonsensical process can be fast-tracked.
‘The scheme planned for Baile Eoghain, Gorey represents another example of a stumbling block by Minister Darcy’s government - where they were not prepared to pay Wexford County Council the quoted building costs and thus derailed the hopes of nine families who were on the waiting list. In 2014, just one social house was built in all of Co. Wexford’. he said.
‘At present there are no County Council backed housing projects under construction in the Gorey area, and substantial government funding is now needed to help the council purchase suitable land in the Gorey area for social housing.’