Cork County Council defends social housing record

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

Cork County Council has pushed back against figures recently released by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage that placed the local authority 21st out of 31 local authorities when it comes to delivering new-build social housing.

The government target for Cork County Council between 2022 and 2024 was 1,818 new-build social houses while 1,304 were actually delivered, a shortfall of 28%.

Responding to a motion on the shortfall put by Cllr Danny Collins at this week's meeting of Cork County Council, Divisional Manager Michael Lynch defended the Council’s record.

He said that a further 1,217 social houses are currently in the pipeline for the period 2025-2028 while 321 affordable houses have been offered across the county in 10 schemes and another 350 units are in the planning and design phase.

Mr Lynch added that social housing provision is not confined to newly built accommodation and the total number of allocations to acquire second-hand properties and vacated or refurbished dwellings in County Cork during 2022-24 was 2,329.

The Council official said that the Council has also worked with state agencies on projects in Carrigaline, Midleton and Carrigtwohill that will deliver more than 7,000 housing units.

“It should be noted Cork County is the highest performing local authority area outside of the Dublin Authorities and Kildare County Council in terms of housing delivery overall with over 2,000 new homes per annum being built currently,” he said.

Mr Lynch said that the challenges the Council faces in meeting social and affordable housing targets include the difficulty in creating a landbank in areas of high demand, insufficient capacity in Uisce Eireann infrastructure, and road infrastructure at key locations such as the R624 to Cobh, the N25, the Bandon Relief Road, the Mallow Relief Road and the development of the M20.

Speaking at the meeting, Cork County Council Chief Executive Moira Murrell said the housing figures released by the department "referred to a very narrow measurement of housing," namely social housing own-built by the Council on the Council's own land.

The figures don’t take into account other models of housing delivery such as the Water Rock development between Midleton and Carrigtwohill "that's providing private public housing to a very large scale."

"I will say there's huge ambition across the county to deliver on housing and there's certainly huge capacity and great skill here within the local authority who have successfully been delivering and continue to deliver,” the Chief Executive said.