Wexford council urged to ‘actively search for land’ for houses as Enniscorthy continues to lag behind other towns

By Simon Bourke, Wexford People

With new housing developments continuing to be announced for Gorey and Wexford town, councillors in Enniscorthy have asked why their district appears to be lagging behind.

Requesting that Wexford County Council’s (WCC) housing team actively go out and look for suitable land rather than wait for it to be offered to them, there was a growing sense of frustration among the elected representatives of Enniscorthy at their November meeting.

“In this district we have 50 houses planned in The Lyre and 65 in Bunclody, which are currently on hold, but that’s all we’re doing in an area where the Housing Minister is from,” said Cathaoirleach Barbara Anne Murphy. “We need to be more ambitious and find more places we can build houses. Even if we could build small clusters of houses in our villages it would be welcome, because not everything should be focused on the town.”

Although WCC regularly asks landowners across the county to express an interest in selling land, those calls rarely bear the kind of fruit required to deal with the housing shortages in the Enniscorthy district. This led Councillor Pat Kehoe to ask when WCC will change its approach and begin proactively searching for suitable land for housing developments.

“I know there’s been calls for people who want to sell land to contact the council, but that’s not happening, so what’s the next step?” he asked. “Can we identify land ourselves and look to put social and affordable housing there? When do we stop waiting for someone to come forward and look strategically at the villages to see what’s available? Nothing gets done if we don’t act.”

He found support from the cathaoirleach.

“In the past, the council’s team went out, physically went out, and looked at land,” she said. “Ideally we’d like to see a return to that method of getting houses built, of actively searching for land rather than waiting for it to be offered.”

Admitting that the regular calls for expressions of interest from landowners were “not hugely effective”, director of services Carolyne Godkin said the council’s entire approach to building houses was changing in tandem with Minister James Browne’s instructions.

“The minister has been really clear, he wants to build larger-scale developments,” she said. “The challenge for us is that our urban centres already have substantial social housing, so how do we build large social housing developments outside those core areas but still build what we need?

"Our focus is going to be on smaller properties, one and two-beds, accessible units for those with disabilities, and building more community facilities in estates, this will be part of our new housing plan which is currently being compiled.”