Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content.
Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist. Buy Automotive Relay
If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter .
Support our mission and join our community now.
To continue reading this article, you can subscribe for as little as €0.50 per week which will also give you access to all of our premium content and archived articles!
Alternatively, you can pay €0.50 per article, capped at €1 per day.
Thank you for supporting Ireland's best local journalism!
Cllr Christy Hyland has called for the income thresholds for social housing to be raised for couples with children
WESTPORT-based county councillor Christy Hyland has claimed couples will need to earn less than the minimum wage to qualify for social housing.
Cllr Hyland said that couples will need to be earning €312 a week, or approximately €7.80 per hour, to avoid breaching the minimum income threshold.
As of January 1, a household comprising two adults with two children must earn less than €33,000 to qualify for social housing.
Cllr Hyland described the ongoing housing shortage in Mayo as ‘a disaster’ and called for the Department of Housing to raise the social housing income bands for couples with children.
“What planet is the department and the government living in?” he asked.
Cllr Hyland also called on Mayo County Council to speed up the delivery of affordable housing at a 50-unit social housing development on Westport’s Golf Course Road.
Castlebar-based Independent Cllr Michael Kilcoyne echoed his concerns, saying that working couples would be unable to qualify for social housing.
Mayo County Council’s Housing SPC Cathaoirleach, Cllr Patsy O’Brien, insisted that the issue of income bands was a matter for national government rather than the county council.
THE council has sought approval for 10 percent of the houses to be designated as affordable. Further discussions are to take place on the matter.
The local authority has already received approval in principle for an affordable housing at a site scheme near Westport Quay.
It is also looking at another side on Westport’s Lodge Road, where it intends to deliver a mix of affordable and social housing.
The council estimates that it will deliver another 738 houses by 2026 under the Housing For All programme.
Mayo County Council’s Director of Services for Housing, Tom Gilligan, told members of the council’s Housing SPC that it had acquired 0.9 hectares of land in Castlebar, as well as sites in Lahardane, Ballina and Bangor-Erris.
Discussions around acquiring other potential sites around Mayo are also ongoing.
Mr Gilligan also told councillors that 222 applications for the Croí Cónaithe grant scheme had been submitted to the local authority.
The government scheme allows successful applicants maximum grants of €50,000 to renovate a vacant property, rising to €70,000 for a derelict property.
Ninety-nine of these applications have been approved to date, 18 of which were in Ballina electoral area, with 24 in the Castlebar area, 39 in Claremorris-Swinford, and 18 in Westport-Belmullet.
To continue reading this article, please subscribe and support local journalism!
Subscribing will allow you access to all of our premium content and archived articles.
To continue reading this article for FREE, please kindly register and/or log in.
Registration is absolutely 100% FREE and will help us personalise your experience on our sites. You can also sign up to our carefully curated newsletter(s) to keep up to date with your latest local news!
Lita Victoria Davis-Maloney passed away on Wednesday
Job Alert: Bluett O'Donoghue Architects are now recruiting
Alexis Kavanagh (10) at the Kinia Creative Tech Fest event and (below) Aoife Martin-Byrne
Photos by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
Subscribe or register today to discover more from DonegalLive.ie
Buy the e-paper of the Donegal Democrat, Donegal People's Press, Donegal Post and Inish Times here for instant access to Donegal's premier news titles.
Keep up with the latest news from Donegal with our daily newsletter featuring the most important stories of the day delivered to your inbox every evening at 5pm.
4P-187 This publication supports the work of the Press Council of Ireland and Office of the Press Ombudsman, and our staff operate within the Code of Practice of the Press Council. You can obtain a copy of the Code, or contact the Council, at www.presscouncil.ie, Lo-call 1800 208 080 or email: info@presscouncil.ie.