Council to create ‘off the books’ company to tackle housing crisis

COMPANY WOULD BE FIRST OF ITS KIND IN IRELAND

CORK County Council is preparing plans to create an “off the books” company in order to tackle the housing crisis which has enveloped the county.

If successful, the company would be the first of its kind in Ireland and could be used nationally to combat the lack of housing available.

The company would be able to borrow money in order to free up sites to incentivise housing developers by reducing the financial risk they face.

The plan comes in light of recent revelations that local authorities would be offering sites to developers as part of a move to incentivise the building of 50,000 new homes.

Cork County Council’s planning department has said that it wants to set up a separate company, which would be jointly owned by the National Treasury Management Agency, under the guidance of the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government.

The proposed company would be subjected to less regulation and easier credit access than the council and any loans taken out would be kept off the state’s books.

However, Blarney-Macroom Sinn Fein councillor Des O’Grady has criticised this approach, saying that the council shouldn’t be using millions in public funds to subsidise private investors, and should instead build the houses themselves.

“This is an initiative we give a broad welcome to as a step in the right direction, even though we believe it still does not go far enough. We support the idea that the Council would jointly set up an off the books arms-length company to purchase land and provide infrastructure for housing, but we would urge the council to add another branch to this company involving the construction of housing.”

Councillor O’Grady said that these measures would not have to be taken if the council had received adequate funds from the Local Activation Fund and believes that the public would have been better served this way.

“Recently, the council were allowed a miserly €20m by the government through the Local Activation Fund to provide infrastructure on 4 sites in the county that could produce 1740 houses by 2021. The shortfall for infrastructure on these sites alone is still €48m and the council does not have funding for this amount.”

“This means that developers will be provided with public money with no guarantee of any return for hard-pressed families seeking a home. We are therefore again calling on the council to use this opportunity to engage in large scale construction of much needed housing,” he added.