From this week’s Galway City Tribune – There are local authority tenants living in homes riddled with damp as more than a million euro of maintenance money lies unspent in City Council coffers.

That’s according to Cllr John Connolly (FF) who referred to the “shocking” figures presented in the annual financial statement which shows an income for housing maintenance and improvements of €11.83 million – made up of grants from Government and the ‘provision of goods and services’, including rental income.

The total spend on these maintenance and improvement works was €10.68 million – leaving a surplus over €1 million.

Cllr Connolly said he was “deeply uncomfortable that the Council seemed to be making a profit” on social housing, at a time when councillors were “inundated” with calls from Council tenants unable to get reasonable requests for maintenance works completed.

One of the Council’s most valuable assets was its housing stock, said the Fianna Fáil councillor, and it was failing to maintain it.

Cllr Connolly said tenants in some of the 2,500 City Council-owned units were living in “seriously substandard conditions” and, despite repeated attempts to have issues rectified, were getting nowhere.
This is a shortened preview version of this story. To read the rest of the article, see the May 19 edition of the Galway City Tribune. You can support our journalism and buy a digital edition HERE.