‘Too many chiefs’ in a Wexford housing department ‘designed to confuse’ councillors and public alike
Wexford PeopleA complex housing system which is “overburdened with bureaucracy” is preventing Wexford County Council (WCC) from delivering for its people according to councillors in the Rosslare district. At their most recent meeting, the district’s councillors were dismayed to learn that, once more, there was no representative from WCC’s housing team to answer their queries – leading to a lengthy discussion on how the system appeared to be “designed to confuse”.
It all started innocently enough, an update on a long-awaited development in Ballygillane the starting point for a debate which would soon turn into an examination of WCC’s recruitment policy.
“That site in Ballygillane was purchased by WCC in 2018 and we still haven’t got houses there,” noted cathaoirleach of the district Councillor Ger Carthy.
“We’ll get to ten years on that I’d say,” added Cllr Lisa McDonald. “The Taoiseach has spoken of apathy in county councils with regards to housing delivery, unfortunately we are the poster boy for that. We need to figure out how to get rid of that apathy.”
At least some of that apathy was instantly removed as Angela Finn, senior staff officer with WCC’s housing capital department, provided a welcome update on the Ballygillane project.
“The contracts at Ballygillane were awarded earlier in the summer, once they were awarded it went into an initial design phase, we’re in that at the moment but we expect the contractor to be on site there in the coming weeks.”
The discussion could have ended there. But with Ms Finn filling in for the housing officer who usually attends the Rosslare meetings, and no one present to provide details of other ongoing projects, Cllr Carthy questioned the inner workings of the council’s housing sections.
“Just with regards to housing delivery can someone tell me who the boss is now?” he asked. “Special projects look after some of it now, Carolyne Godkin (director of services) has more of it, but no one appears to be in charge of anything.
"When I started here John Carley was the director of housing and that included allocation, construction, delivery, and so on. Can someone in this building, out of all the staff, take responsibility for housing?”
Director of finance, Lynda Lacey, attempted to explain the system but succeeded only in muddying the waters further.
“Special projects has nothing to do with housing,” she began. “Housing construction is under the capital development director and is handled by special projects, Carolyne Godkin is in housing delivery.”
None the wiser, Cllr McDonald made reference to the short-lived stay of a senior council official who had recently departed the building for pastures new.
“In a housing crisis, which is going to continue as the population increases, we have a situation where we’re a stepping stone to other jobs,” she said. “We need people who are interested in building houses in Wexford applying for those jobs, the next person who comes in has to be passionate about housing.
"The minister (for housing, James Browne) himself needs to take a look at how these appointments are being made – not only do we have a centralisation of power, we’re also taking power away from politicians and giving it to executives. Where that is the case the executives have to be answerable to the politicians, it’s not good enough for the public.”
Warming to the theme, Cllr Carthy said he took issue with Taoiseach Micheál Martin attempting to shift the responsibility for housing to county councils.
“I take umbrage with the comments made by the taoiseach where he threw all the blame on the county councils,” he said, “Our hands are tied behind our back here, we’ve little or no funding, the power has been taken away from the councillors and now it’s going to be returned to us when the fat is in the fire.
"The taoiseach doesn’t need to preach to us about housing delivery or zoning, we’d happily zone plenty of land if he gave us the funding; firstly for the wastewater infrastructure and then to do the houses.”
Mention of Uisce Éireann (UE) and its role in delivering housing in rural areas, sent Cllr Carthy down another rabbit hole.
“Our district engineer can’t even contact UE, one time we were solely responsible for waste and water infrastructure and now it’s got nothing to do with us,” he said. “A member of the public will get as quick a response as our engineer or myself if they contact them. If Angela rings them she’ll have the same wait time.”
Cllr Jim Codd, however, wished to return to the kernel of the issue; the council’s malfunctioning housing department.
“When I come in here every month with a series of questions about our roads Michael Brazzill (district engineer) has the answers. The housing department is designed to confuse. There’s too many chiefs, we need one person who can provide the answers, one person who has the same exhaustive knowledge as Michael does.
“UE is the planner now, the west side of our district has been starved of houses because of the lack of wastewater facilities, we are knowingly destroying our rural communities and directing them towards massive estates in towns where we empty those communities. We need to know what the chain of command is in the housing department.”
At this juncture, Ms Finn made a further attempt to explain the machinations of this much-maligned department.
“Carolyne Godkin is the director, Stephen O’Connor is the SEO, they cover everything except for local authority builds which are covered by the housing capital team. We don’t currently have a director but Shay (Howell, county architect) is the head of our section.”
While they accepted this explanation and even came close to understanding it, the councillors still felt it was an inefficient way to tackle the crisis of our times.
“This is one county council and I can’t bear the thought that we have two distinct teams looking after housing,” said Cllr McDonald. “The people in our district want one council delivering houses for them, we need to go back to basics, the system is overburdened with bureaucracy.”