Serviced land in Wexford village not being used to build houses

THE dimensions of Wexford County Council’s elusive land bank was up for discussion at a special meeting on housing last week as councillors sought to determine where houses could and couldn’t be built by the local authority. Addressing a query regarding the progress of the Ready to Build (RTB) scheme in the county, Director of Services Clare Godkin said availability was a constant issue.

“We don’t have land available for the ready to build scheme, we were to look at our available land bank and find serviceable land for this scheme but we don’t have any, we’re using all our land for social housing projects,” she said.

“Can we see the listed land bank?” asked Councillor Lisa McDonald, “I know of land (in Piercestown), I’m not sure if it’s on your system, that I think would be suitable, we don’t know what you’re saying is your land bank, can we have details of the land bank?”

“We don’t have any land, there’s nada land,” interjected Cllr Ger Carthy from the other side of the room.

Head of Special Projects, Eddie Taaffe, advised Cllr McDonald to send him details of the potential site in Piercestown before county architect Shay Howell explained the difficulty in finding suitable, serviced land.

“On average I get a call every two weeks about buying land from someone, we take them all on board, most of them end after one conversation because we can’t afford it, but the phone is always there, we’ll consider all offers,” he said.

Sometime later in the meeting, it transpired that Cllr Aidan Browne was aware of suitable, serviced land in his district which, to the best of his knowledge, wasn’t being used by WCC.

“I’m disappointed and frustrated that Marshalstown isn’t part of plans to build in villages,” he said, “I know we do have serviced land in the village and I’m disappointed to hear we’re not building on it; I know the answer will be there’s not enough people on the housing list in Marshalstown but I’ve said this umpteen times before, it’s a false economy, there’s no house been built there for 20 years so people aren’t putting it down on their list when applying for social houses.”

“I don’t know much about Marshalstown,” admitted Mr Howell, “I’ll look into it.”