Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)

When speaking to people in Kerry and dealing with the housing officers in Kerry County Council who are swamped with a deluge of people who are suffering from notices to quit, long waiting lists, rents they cannot afford and being denied access to some of the various schemes, it is obvious that the answer is more social and affordable housing. However, in Kerry, there was no affordable housing scheme. Under the tenant in situ scheme there were three sales agreed but they have all been pulled from the most vulnerable of people who were waiting. Houses in Kerry have been boarded up for close to ten years, which is the worst in the country. A few years ago when the tenant purchase scheme was announced, the Government expected that conveyancing would go through within four months but that was never going to happen. There is only one other county, Wicklow, which has two houses empty for longer than seven years whereas in Kerry we have 18 houses empty for that long or more. Linked to that is the fact that Kerry has the longest average turnaround time for boarded-up houses, a staggering 65 weeks. A full 30% of boarded up houses in the entire State are in Kerry. What is going on there? This week we discovered that the OPW has 70 empty properties around the State, some of which have been empty since 1974, which is more than 50 years. It is difficult to deal with the OPW . It agreed to give a site for a playground, for example, in Dún Chaoin but three years later that still has not been completed. There is no management and nobody seems to be in charge. It is up to the Government to sort it out rather than blaming the hard working staff of Kerry County Council or the people who are waiting on the housing waiting lists.

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