| Council defends empty housing stock statistics |
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| Thursday, 21 August 2008 | |
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DUBLIN City Council has denied accusations that it’s sitting on its hands in relation to the refurbishment of vacant and badly needed houses. According to Public Accounts Committee (PAC) figures for 2006, almost 2,600 premises under the responsibility of the council lay idle, despite a rising demand for social housing. The council accounted for almost half of all unused social houses in the entire country for that year. Local TD Roisin Shortall (Lab) said the figures indicate a failure to efficiently revamp and re-use empty dwellings in an effort to tackle rising housing lists. “Dublin City Council compares poorly with other local authorities throughout the country,” she said. “While it has approximately 23 per cent of housing stock throughout the country, figures indicate that in 2006 it had 47 per cent of the vacancies. “While I do acknowledge that some of these houses are under repair, I believe there is a clear problem in terms of allocation. There seems to be an unacceptably long delay in the chain of events between the repair, revamp and re-let of vacant homes to families that are clearly in need.” Deputy Shortall called on the council to turn around its social housing more effectively. “Every effort must now be made to bring these houses back into use as soon as possible,” she concluded. A spokesperson for Dublin City Council said the figures don’t reflect the circumstances behind vacant housing. “As of the end of June 2008, the council has a total stock of 27,205 housing units. A total of 3,108 of these are empty,” the spokesperson told Northside People. “However, a breakdown of this figure will show that the majority of these empty units are vacant pending demolition in places such as Ballymun, St Michael’s Estate and O'Deveney Gardens or are vacant pending refurbishment of the entire block of units.” According to the council’s figures, 354 houses are waiting to be re-let, 324 are newly purchased properties and long-term repair works are being carried out in 175 premises. Just over 200 council units are awaiting refurbishment. The spokesperson added: “Dublin City Council has procedures in place to ensure the swift turnaround of empty properties to allow for new tenants.” The council also pointed out that of the 3,018 empty units, a total of 2,165 units will not be re-let again as they won’t exist due to demolition to make way for new housing stock. In stark comparison with Dublin City Council, Fingal County Council had just 78 houses out of its 3,919 stock vacant in 2006. |
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Developed by Kevin Flynn