Mayo County Council has received an allocation of €3.7 million for the housing repair grants for the elderly for 2010. This year’s allocation is an increase from the €2.9 million allocation in 2009. But it comes nowhere near meeting the requirements to pay out the number of applications that have been received for the grants according to Fine Gael councillor Patsy O’Brien at the Claremorris Electoral Area this weekend. “This allocation is nowhere near half enough,” Cllr O’Brien said. “There are people who are over a year waiting for this money to come through after they submitted their allocations.”
Senior executive officer for Mayo County Council Padraig Flanagan told the members: “We have received €3.7 million this year which is a substantial increase from last year, but there is a large backlog from the last few years. At least half the money will be spent on existing applications, the rest on newer applications, and we will be looking at emergency cases as they come in.” Mr Flanagan also confirmed that the council was still accepting applications as they had no mechanism to refuse to accept applications. Independent councillor Richard Finn told the meeting: “I welcome the extra funding for this, but the reality is that if we were given €5 million or €6 million, we’d still have plenty of places to spend it and probably not have enough.”
