'There are 850 people in our district waiting for housing,' warns Tipperary councillor

Tipperary County Council recently held their monthly meeting for the Tipperary/Cahir/Cashel Municipal District on Monday July 28.

A housing report read by members of the meeting received numerous queries from councillors. Sinn Fein Cllr Anne Marie Ryan Shiner spoke about the reported number of people on waiting lists for housing in the district, that was listed in this report.

“There are 850 people in our district waiting for housing, there are 224 houses being built and they’re all at different stages. We really need to examine the housing targets for this district, because it’s not enough. If we are building 224 houses but we have got 850 people on the list in the Tipperary Cashel Cahir MD, it leaves very little hope for people.

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"I’m asking can we re-examine our housing targets for this district in particular please. Especially in Tipperary Town. There is no built project in Tipperary Town, bar two on Fr Matthews Street, so we’re only building two properties in the whole of Tipp Town.”

Cllr Ryan-Shiner then pointed out again the vast number of those waiting to be housed compared with the number of dwellings being built in the large area of Tipperary Town.

She then went on to speak about vacant properties in Emly that could be brought back into use by the council, to help ease this list of almost 900 people. Cllr Ryan-Shiner said that herself and Fine Gael Cllr Mary Hanna Hourigan had been working on this issue for a while.

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“I do want to talk about those empty properties,” began Cllr Ryan-Shiner.

“If you look at that housing list, you’ve got people from Emly, one from Lattin, seven from Cullen, 17 from Monard and 231 people in Tipperary Town. There’s about 25 to 27 empty three-bed decent properties in Emly that we’ve been asking Tipperary County Council to find a way of bringing those back into use.”

Cllr Ryan-Shiner asked the council to provide an update on this situation. She also mentioned that Uisce Eireann have now resolved the water situation at these properties.

“Uisce Eireann are out there as we speak, it’s really very much appreciated, but there are houses lying there empty during a housing crisis. That’s just not good enough anymore, we have to turn these houses around as soon as possible” concluded Cllr Ryan-Shiner.

Cllr Liam Browne also voiced his concerns over the council’s turnaround time in relation to opening up vacant properties and bringing them back into use.

“We’re constantly told that Tipperary County Council has some of the quickest turnaround times for vacant properties but it’s still an issue. There are houses in Cashel that have been empty for a long, long time. Some of them, people could have moved into the day after people left the house.

"They’re still not on the CPL site and they’re still not ready to be moved into," said Cllr Browne. He then went on to tell the council that the district needs a more balanced housing provision as while he is happy that houses are being built in Cashel, he echoed Cllr Ryan-Shiner in criticism of the lack of homes being built in and around Tipperary Town.

A spokesperson for the council’s housing department said that while not every area is covered, the council does have a varied distribution of housing projects across the county.

In relation to the turnaround time of vacant houses they said “some works take longer than others, but we are working very closely to get them turned around. Once finished we have very strict timelines and try get tenants into them as soon as we can.”