More 'bang for our buck' demanded for work on Tipperary council houses

Public representatives want to see more ‘bang for our buck” in terms of getting work done on council houses.

At a meeting of Tipperary/Cahir/Cashel MD councillors said more maintenance work should be carried out on council houses.

A number of councillors expressed the view that the authority would get more value for money by carrying out more maintenance work in council houses than what is achieved through the energy efficiency retrofit programme.

Cllr Liam Browne said the council would get a “much bigger bang for our buck” by focusing on a well-planned maintenance system for council houses.

Chairperson Cllr Marie Murphy agreed with her colleague.

She said a lot would be happening in the next few months with the retrofit scheme but felt there would be a great benefit from doing more of the small work through the maintenance programme. She said because the funding for the retrofit came from the department, the council was limited in what they could do.

A housing official told the meeting that the numbers on the retrofit scheme were relatively small. The target was 95 units, and he anticipated that 105 would be done by the end of the year.It was intended to generate a 5 year rolling programme across ech district for the scheme with the final fiture to be completed each year dependent on the department allocation.

He said they were working through the small works maintenance programme to pick up the smaller issues in the houses.