People Before Profit Galway representative Maisie McMaster has criticised the suggestion by Galway City Central Labour councillor John McDonagh that the council should sell long-term vacant homes to private developers for refurbishment, stating that it means the de facto privatisation of public housing.
Ms McMaster said: “Councillor John McDonagh’s assertion that selling vacant council properties to private developers will bring them back into use, and provide a revenue stream to purchase social housing, is not a convincing solution to the housing crisis. While 57,206 properties are vacant according to Local Property Tax returns, census estimates are much higher at 166,752, which does not include the 66,135 seasonal holiday homes across the country. 5.5 per cent of dwellings in Galway were registered as vacant last year.
“The impact of vacancy is visible around Galway city and county, from the city centre to provincial towns like Ballinasloe, where our candidate Andrew Mannion has consistently highlighted the blight of dereliction, to Connemara, where groups like Bánú have highlighted the impact of vacant properties on Gaeltacht areas.
“Private developers have patently not arrested this situation. The Government has shamefully allowed ‘investors’ to sit on vacant houses during a housing crisis, letting them fall into disrepair and cause major problems for those nearby. Local authorities should be refurbishing and retrofitting these properties to bring them back into public use, not de facto privatising them by selling them to private developers, who are part of the problem, not the solution.
“The Labour Party must clarify if Councillor McDonagh’s statement is in accordance with its policies. While Labour’s website calls for ‘to bring vacant and derelict properties back into use, to be repurposed to provide much-needed homes for people’, McDonagh places primary emphasis on selling them off.
“It’s Housing Plan Budget 2024 calls for ‘a retrofitting scheme for owner-occupiers who want to buy and refurbish vacant and derelict housing’, while McDonagh appears to go further, bringing private developers into the picture. In contrast, People Before Profit’s attitude is clear and consistent: keeping public housing in public hands, and creating a state building company to retrofit vacant and derelict housing and bring it into use,” McMaster concluded.
