Over 30 vacant council houses throughout North Cork will be refurbished and families re-housed in them by the end of the year, according to the Chairman of the Kanturk/Mallow Municipal District of Cork County Council, Cllr. John Paul O’Shea (Independent), who said this week: “We have far too many council houses idle throughout North Cork, and we need more funding from national government in order to give deserving families a home.”
Some of the locations around North Cork where vacant houses are to be repaired and upgraded include Woodview Drive and Powerscourt, Mallow, Main Street, Ballyclough, Churchview, Buttevant, Love Lane and Batt Donegan Place, Charleville, Scannell’s Place, Nadd, O’ Callaghan Park and Mill Road, Kanturk, Croke Place, Milford, and Corney Ring Place, Dromina.
Cllr. O’ Shea said that, while funding for the repair of 30 houses in North Cork is very welcome, the Government must do more to assist Cork County Council and other local authorities to repair and upgrade their social housing stock into the future. “Some of our housing stock was built as far back as the 1940s and ‘50s, so there is a significant amount of upgrading works required in these houses, such as replacing windows and doors, insulating the walls, roofs and a ttics, dry-lining, installation of oil heating etc. I am making a call to the new Minister of State at the Department of the Environment with Special Responsibility for Housing, Mr. Paudie Coffey, TD, that he would bring forward a proposal to Government as part of Budget 2015 and make funding available for a specific three year refurbishment programme for vacant local authority houses, in order for all local authorities to be in a position to repair and upgrade all their vacant houses and to give deserving families who have been on the social housing list for some time a home for the future.”
The councillor added, “At any one stage in the year, Cork County Council has up to 80 houses in North Cork vacant and awaiting funding for repair. This is lunacy of the highest degree as we currently have over 1,100 people on our housing list for North Cork. If we could get these 80 vacant houses in North Cork occupied today, we could reduce this list significantly. We need more action by our Government on this issue, sooner rather than later.”