Cork City Council spending €10m a year on external tradespeople for housing repairs

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

Cork City Council spent over €10m on external contactors for housing maintenance services in 2024 and expects to spend the same amount this year, figures released by the local authority show.

Responding to a question by Cllr Joe Lynch, the acting director of services in the housing directorate Nicky Carroll said that the cost of external contractors in 2024 was €10,144,031 with the figure for 2025 expected to be approximately €10,000,000.

Mr Carroll said that Cork City Council’s Housing Assets Section employs 57 tradespeople and currently has no apprentices. The tradespeople employed by the council include 21 carpenters, 17 plumbers, 7 plasterers, 6 painters, 4 masons and 2 fitters. Currently, 57pc of housing maintenance jobs are undertaken by council employees and 43pc by external contractors.

Cllr Lynch, a Sinn Féin councillor in the city’s South-West ward, believes the system needs to be overhauled. “It is very clear that there are not enough tradespeople directly employed by the council, meaning external contractors are regularly being hired to carry out repairs to council houses. This is costing the council a fortune,” he told the Irish Independent.

"Using some of those funds to hire more tradespeople means the Council won't have to go through the additional layer of bureaucracy of having to procure contractors to carry out urgent repairs and undertake refurbishments, which is wasting vital funds and is resulting in a lack of proactive maintenance of cold, damp and unsafe council houses across the city.”