One Mayo district has no vacant local authority houses

In a week where high residential vacancy rates in Mayo and throughout the west of Ireland were highlighted, Ballina Municipal District was able to report no vacant houses among its stock.

At the January monthly meeting of the authority, Declan Turnbull, head of Ballina MD, said that as of December last, all of its houses had been offered and let, making it a good news story.

There are 64 houses in the housing construction programme, some of them very close to being ready. The major development is a 50-house estate at Rehins Fort, Ballina, with additional schemes in Crossmolina (two three-unit projects), Moygownagh (one three-unit project) and Bonniconlon (one five-unit project).

Council members joined Mr. Turnbull in complimenting the housing staff in Ballina MD for ensuring there are no vacant units currently.

However, a number noted that there is still a problem with dereliction in the town that needs to be addressed.

“There is good work being done,” said Councillor Mark Duffy, “but whatever we can do in Ballina to continue to return vacant space back to housing would be well received. It brings down an estate or a street when there are one or two vacant properties.”

Agreeing with the point, Councillor Jarlath Munnelly said there is 'no excuse' for the amount of vacant former council houses. Developing them be a good way of re-stocking social housing and dealing with dereliction at the same time.

“If we have to go down the CPO route then we should,” he continued. “I would like to see significant progress on that this year.”

Director of services Tom Gilligan also complimented the council staff involved in ensuring there are no vacant houses in Ballina Municipal District.

“That is no mean achievement, particularly in a week where the vacancy and dereliction rates have been highlighted,” he said.

“Ballina Municipal District is once again showing leadership and whatever secret sauce we have, we need to share it with other MDs as well.”

Mr. Gilligan said the challenge now is to keep the number of vacant local authority houses at zero for the entirety of this year.

He added that the council wants to address the issue of dereliction and get it down too.