‘We need to wake up’
FINE Gael has “completely dropped the ball” on the issue of housing development in Sligo.
That’s according to Fianna Fáil County Councillor Tom MacSharry.
“Everybody wants a house and everybody is entitled to a house but there’s no houses on the market. I would argue that Fine Gael has completely dropped the ball on this.
“The hierarchy in Fine Gael, from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to the Minister for Finance (Paschal Donohoe) to the Housing Minister (Eoghan Murphy) are all Dublin focused. Rural Ireland is just simply not in their DNA,” he said.
“I would also argue that the CEO and the planners of Sligo County Council really need to wake up to this. They really need to address it and plan for it as a matter of urgency,” he told this newspaper.
Cllr MacSharry pointed to the old Affordable Housing scheme: “That was a great scheme. There’s hundreds of people who want to come back to Sligo and buy a house. If you link that with what the IDA have requested, all these new jobs are brilliant and they have to be celebrated but where are these people going to live?”
“Take that in conjunction with the retired and elderly who have reared their families, they can’t downsize and a lot of them can’t afford to maintain the properties they’re in.
“They’re looking to downsize to smaller properties but they have nowhere to go. There’s no development where they can stay in their own community that they helped build and that they love and the community who will ultimately mind them in their golden years.
Cllr MacSharry said one of the IDA pre-requisites is that there would be a sustainable housing programme in the area to attract foreign direct investment.
When contacted by The Sligo Champion, a spokesperson for the IDA was understandably reluctant to comment. They do not want to see any negative headlines about the lack of development in Sligo given their job is to persuade companies to come here - companies which do a lot of research into an area before investing.
Cllr MacSharry said he supported his party colleague Councillor Seamus Kilgannon in his recent motion in June calling on the Council to release lands from the Strategic Land Reserve.
It’s also something he said Fianna Fáil wanted to raise when the County Development Plan was being discussed last year.
“Where can they build? There isn’t enough zoned land. There simply isn’t. There’s no sustainable building programme for Social, Affordable and private homes. If the CEO and planners are restricted by Government policy then that has to change.
“You have a minister saying loud and clear that they’re addressing the housing crisis but they’re not. Drive around Sligo - where’s the development? I don’t see any evidence of development around here,” he said.