Inventory of Mayo council-owned lands being compiled as housing pressure mounts
Mayo County Council is to compile an inventory of its land holdings as councillors pressed for urgent action on a shortage of development sites available for housing.
The move was agreed at a meeting of the authority's housing strategic policy committee following calls from its chair, Councillor Peter Flynn, for a full audit of all council-owned parcels of five acres or more.
Councillor Flynn warned that if the exercise revealed little usable land, it would amount to a serious indictment of the council's long-term planning.
"If there is nothing above five acres, we have become a selling county," he said.
"That's an indictment. Every day we have a meeting - I have suggested a parcel of land to enquire about. Why aren't we buying land?"
Director of services Catherine McConnell said the council did have a mechanism for land acquisition and pointed to Knockthomas as an example of where it had been used.
Head of housing Olivia Gallagher said the council had drawn on the Department of Housing's land acquisition fund and was likely better positioned than some other local authorities, but that any future purchases would require departmental approval.
Independent Councillor Michael Kilcoyne questioned why the council was not raising loans for land acquisition in the same way it funded other capital projects.
"We raise loans for other projects - why aren't we raising for this?" he asked.
Councillor Harry Barrett said the land question was central to the committee's purpose.
"This is the core of this SPC," he said, calling for serviced sites and affordable homes to be prioritised for working families who were being squeezed out of the rental market by rising costs and the loss of long-term lets to short-term platforms like Airbnb.
Ms. McConnell confirmed the land inventory would be brought back to the chief executive and that the committee would receive an update at a future meeting.
* Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme