Almost 70 local authority houses across Galway have been boarded up for more than a year with little effort to have them brought back into use and allocated to families on the housing waiting lists.

Of the 162 unoccupied local authority houses in the city and county, more than 40% of them have been vacant for more than 12 months.

The housing vacancy rate in Galway was revealed in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted by Sinn Féin’s Deputy Louis O’Hara who described the findings as “a scandal”.

And now the government has been slammed for their failure to provide the resources necessary to bring these properties back into use, given the fact that there are more than 3,000 people on the County Council’s housing waiting list alone.

According to the Galway East TD, both the city and county councils are being starved of the necessary funding to make these properties habitable again.

Deputy O’Hara said that it was unacceptable that so many dwellings have been left to lie empty in the middle of a housing emergency.

In Galway city, 87 homes are vacant with 31 of these being unoccupied for more than a year, while in County Galway there are 75 homes unoccupied with 36 vacant for more than a year.

The TD went on to say that National Oversight and Audit Commission (NOAC) Performance Indicators 2023 Report found that average re-letting times were around one year in both Galway city and county.

“There is nothing more insulting to those impacted by the housing emergency than the sight of a perfectly good home left empty.

“Each of these homes should have a family living in them with children growing up within these four walls.  Instead, these homes are empty and children are growing up in hotels. That is beyond scandalous.

“I am sick and tired of the government’s excuses and broken promises.  They try to blame everyone but themselves.  The reality is that this is an issue in all local authorities and in far too many communities because of their failings.

“They do not provide enough funding to maintain homes and they do not provide enough funding to return them to use.”

He said that this report found that average re-letting time was above 49 weeks in Galway city and 52 weeks in County Galway. He added that it should not take a year to re-let an empty council house.

Pictured: Sinn Féin’s Deputy Louis O’Hara