The average turnaround time for making vacant houses ready for occupation in Galway City is between two to five months, it was revealed yesterday in a national survey of local authority housing stock.
The survey carried out by a national newspaper revealed that in Galway, 71 of the city’s 2,799 houses are currently lying empty.
The five months it takes to turnaround houses in Galway city is in marked contrast to the six-week turnaround time in the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown, eight weeks in Limerick, but is better than Cork city which has a turnaround time of almost eight months for local authority housing.
The Limerick turnaround time is explained by the fact that the vast majority of its housing stock is in areas which have been designated for regeneration and therefore are being prepared for demolition rather than being repaired.
Delays in turning around houses have been attributed in the main to a sharp reduction in all authorities in the number of staff who were hired for such work in the past.
However the variations between housing turnaround times in the various major urban centers in the country has angered Threshold who feel that there should be a maximum number of local authority houses lying vacant at any one time.
Currently almost 2,000 local authority homes are lying empty in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway — a figure that Threshold feel is unacceptable at a time when there are almost 100,000 people on the housing waiting list.
Its director Ben Jordan said that there should also be targets for how long is acceptable for a house to stay vacant.
He said the recent announcement that Nama would make 2,000 units of housing available for social housing was “meaningless when almost 2,000 units of social housing are lying empty”.
Dublin City Council has the highest number of vacant dwellings, at 592, out of a total stock of 24,539 units of housing (2.4 per cent vacancy ).
Cork City Council has 431 vacant dwellings out of total stock of 8,755 (4.31 per cent vacancy ).
Limerick City Council has 378 vacant dwellings out of a total stock of 2,800 (13.5 per cent ).
There are 115 vacant dwellings in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown where the council has 4,400 dwellings (2.61 per cent vacancy ) and 98 in South Dublin County where the council has 1,630 dwellings (six per cent vacancy rate ).
In Galway city there are 71 vacant dwellings out of a total stock of 2,799 (2.53 per cent ) and Fingal has 59 vacant dwellings out of a stock of 4,465 (1.32 per cent vacancy ).
The average time to refurbish a house for reletting in Dublin City is 25.6 weeks.
In Fingal it is 23 weeks and in South Dublin County it is 14.5 weeks.
Galway city has given an average turnaround time of two to five months, while Limerick city is reletting in an average of eight weeks and Dún Laoghaire six weeks.
The numbers of housing maintenance staff in all councils has fallen steadily over the past three years.
In Dublin city the number has fallen from 773 in 2008 to a projected 640 by the end of next year. In Fingal numbers have fallen from 31 to 28.
In Cork city numbers have fallen from 169 in 2008 to 161 now. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown housing maintenance staff numbers are down from 52 in 2009 to 42 this year; in South Dublin County they are down from 55 to 46 since 2009 and in Galway from 36 down to 33.
