'Council are the one landlord in the country not subject to the rules,' Tipperary meeting hears

The Cahir/Tipperary/Cashel Municipal District’s monthly meeting was held on Monday March 24 this month and councillors had many questions regarding a recent housing directorate report that was circulated amongst the councillors.

Deirdre Flannery, Breda Ryan and Sean Lonergan, from the council’s housing division, were present to answer any questions on the report that morning.

Independent Cllr Liam Browne said that he has had queries from people who have council houses who need small repairs done to their houses, like door handles or window handles.

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He asked the meeting whether the council as landlords should fix these small jobs, as other landlords are expected to.

Cllr Browne told the meeting that “They’re constantly told by the council, page 12 of the handbook, that that’s their responsibility.

“Some of these houses are 20 or 30 years old, with handles falling off the windows, you can’t even get them anymore. We need a bigger budget for doing some of these repairs and even using some of the energy retrofit budget. Instead of spending 30 or 40 thousand to fix one council house, that money could fix a lot of these smaller jobs in other houses. Can that money be allocated to something else like small jobs?” asked Cllr Browne.

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“I’ve been told that the local authority is the one landlord in the country not subject to the rules of the RTB. There’s a lot of stuff that needs to be repaired and if you went to the RTB it would be a landlord’s responsibility to repair these small jobs, but we’re consistently putting that back on the local authority tenants.

“A lot of people simply can’t afford it. I don’t mean if someone breaks a door handle, I mean in the case of 30 or 40 year old council houses that need to be repaired. I don’t know if there is a budget there for that repair. We have a responsibility as landlords as well, the same way other landlords do too.” continued Cllr Browne.

A housing spokesperson replied to Cllr Browne stating that “We have a budget, we have to work within it. There are constraints there, it is a restrictive budget.”

Cllr Browne also has a query regarding the energy retrofit scheme saying: “I have people coming to me who have been offered it but don’t want to take it, because they don’t want to take the whole scheme. They’re afraid it’s air to water, and they’re worried because of what happened at the start of the year.

“If you do one part of the scheme, you have to do all of the scheme. People are coming to me and asking if they have to take out fireplaces and stoves to do the scheme, and I said they really do. I’m just wondering if you have to do the whole job or nothing at all?” said Cllr Browne.

A housing spokesperson responded saying that tenants have to do the whole energy retrofit scheme to be eligible for the grant to retrofit their homes.