Mayo applicants left waiting for over eight months for Vacant Homes Grant
Applicants in County Mayo are facing waiting times of up to eight and a half months to receive payment under the Vacant Homes Refurbishment Grant.
At a recent meeting of Mayo County Council, Cllr Donna Sheridan stated that some applicants can be waiting for up to 33 weeks.
The scheme offers up to €50,000 for refurbishing a vacant property, or €70,000 if the property is derelict, and is administered by local authorities.
The Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant aims to bring vacant or derelict properties back into use.
Cllr Sheridan described the backlog as “outrageous,” noting that she had spoken with colleagues in other counties and said: “This is not happening in other councils.”
The council heard that just 26 grants were paid in the first quarter of this year, dropping to seven in the second quarter, highlighting the slowdown in processing applications.
Cllr Sheridan has requested that the Director of Services for Housing, Tom Gilligan, issue a press release to “tell people the truth of what’s going on, out of fairness and transparency to people that have applied for the grant.”
Cllr Alma Gallagher supported the call. She questioned how long applicants were waiting for initial inspections and requested a timeline for this, as well.
In response, Mr Gilligan told the meeting that the council was a “victim of its own success,” pointing out that Mayo has the third highest number of applications and the fourth highest approvals nationwide under the grant.
“We have had 900 applications coming in. At the end of June, we had 128 grants paid out, the equivalent of €6.7m,” he said.
As of August 2025, the council have paid out for 147 grants.
Mr Gilligan acknowledged that the grant is currently a “paper-based” scheme but said an online system is being developed to improve the process.
He said that around 90pc of applications received by the council are incomplete, meaning that staff have to follow up for missing documents, a process that adds to the delays.
While expressing regret that applicants are facing long waits, he reiterated that the council is, in his words, “a victim of its own success.”.
He did not agree to issuing a press release as proposed by Cllr Sheridan.
This sparked a response from Cllr Peter Flynn, who said he was “struggling to listen” to Mr Gilligan’s response.
“To describe yourself as the victim of your own success. These are individual people who are putting in applications, who are going to their banks looking for loans, who are trying to get contractors,
“All we are asking Mayo County Council to do is to approve the applications, get inspections done in a timely manner and get the people paid.”
Under the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant, applicants must submit an application along with supporting documents to their local authority.
The authority reviews the paperwork and carries out an initial inspection to ensure the property is eligible for the grant.
If approved, the applicant receives a letter to confirm this and is given 13 months to complete the refurbishment.
The applicant must then provide details of the contractor carrying out the work, along with all invoices for the completed work.
The local authority carries out a second inspection to confirm that the work has been completed and aligns with the approved costs.
If satisfied, the local authority will ask the applicant to sign a charge document, giving the council security over the property for the grant. Once the charge is signed and the inspection is approved, the grant is released.
Cllr Sheridan noted that the council currently has two full-time staff assigned to deal with affordable housing. The previous affordable housing scheme announced in Mayo included five three-bedroom houses in November 2024. She suggested that resources could be redirected to help tackle the backlog.
“Should we not be dealing with the backlog and trying to help people if housing and dereliction are our priority. No one will go near this grant with the delays we have at the moment, we need a solution,” she said.
Highlighting the scheme as the only route for people in Mayo above the social housing threshold to own their own home, Cllr Sheridan called the delays “inconceivable.”
Much of the backlog, as Cllr Sheridan pointed out, occurs after approvals are granted, when applicants submit invoices and wait for final inspections and payment.
Cllr Gallagher also noted delays earlier in the process, with applications taking a long time to be reviewed and inspected initially.
Together, these hold-ups mean applicants are waiting longer than expected, highlighting the urgent need for the council to streamline the process and allocate additional resources.
The Chief Executive of Mayo County Council, Kevin Kelly, told the meeting that the backlog was primarily due to issues on the inspection side of the scheme rather than administrative processing.
He added that the council would be adding an extra staff member in the coming weeks to help speed up the process.
Cllr Sheridan’s proposal for a press release on the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant delays, seconded at the meeting, does not legally require one to be issued, but highlights councillors’ call for greater transparency for their constituents.
This article has been funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.