SOME 1,100 affordable homes still remain unsold because of the slump in the property market, the Department of the Environment has said.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) also heard yesterday that an additional 1,000 affordable homes will be coming on stream during 2010.
Officials from the department told the meeting that the bulk of the unsold units, some 80 per cent, were located in the Dublin and Cork regions.
However, they argued that significant inroads had been made in reducing the stock of unsold affordable houses in the past year.
Secretary general Geraldine Tallon said the department responded swiftly when it emerged last year that the stock of unsold affordable units was increasing. It had brought the number of unsold units down from 3,400 at this time last year to 1,100 now. This had been achieved through the sale of 700 units and from the transfer of a further 1,600 units for social housing.
When questioned by TDs Ned O’Keeffe (Fianna Fáil) and Deirdre Clune (Fine Gael), Ms Tallon said there was no legal impediment to transferring most of the remaining units for use as social housing, if deemed suitable.
Labour Party TD Róisín Shortall said one of the reasons local authorities could not sell the units was because the market price for property had fallen to below the original discounted prices for affordable properties.
She also suggested that many affordable units were now in negative equity.
The meeting also heard that almost 4,000 local authority houses lay vacant at the end of 2008. The department said the figure represented a “significant improvement” on 2007 when about 5,000 or 4.3 per cent of properties lay vacant.
“We do feel that it’s an area where local authorities can do better . . . We accept that it’s an area where strong focus needs to be maintained,” said Ms Tallon.
She said the average delay between occupancy was 22 weeks. Committee chair Bernard Allen (Fine Gael) said there was one local authority house in Cork that had been vacant for 14 years.
Ms Shortall said that increasingly, local authority houses were being “trashed” after families had been evicted. The vacated houses constituted “a blight on communities” and local authorities were powerless to do anything about it because of a lack of funds.
Mr Allen said he agreed: “There are lots of houses closed up, shuttered, some of them wrecked by anti-social behaviour and they are a scar on the face of areas. It’s just adding to the downgrading of areas.”
Ms Tallon said the overall budget for local authorities was €5 billion and “it was simply not good enough to take refuge in the idea that local authorities have no money”.
Ms Tallon defended the record of the department, saying that the needs of 125,000 families had been met since 2001.
