‘No will’ to build houses in rural areas – Councillor McDermott

Councillor Martin McDermott was speaking at this week’s Inishowen Municipal District Meeting, at which he said rural areas in the peninsula are seeing population numbers continuing to drop, which will only get worse if homes are not built.

He added how the lack of Specific Instance (SI) housing is severely impacting rural areas and outlined how he has raised the matter for the ‘last six or seven years’.

SI housing is built by local authorities on land provided by those on the housing list.

Colr McDermott said: "At this stage, I’m nearly past the point of taking it up. There certainly isn’t a will to do it – at senior management level, not at this level – because Inishowen hasn’t had an SI house in years.”

He continued: “It is happening in other counties, but it’s not happening in this county and we’ve been saying it over and over again. It’s moved on month to month, year to year and nothing happens. There is no will within the council to build SI houses and we hear that from people on a day-to-day basis.”

Colr Albert Doherty supported Colr McDermott and said it is a matter ‘that needs to be debated at length’.

Colr Doherty raised the issue of the recent eviction ban and the defective blocks crisis and said councillors are being ‘pressed for many answers’ in relation to housing.

Una Cresswell, Housing, said all SI applications are currently being reviewed.

Colr McDermott added that if councillors ‘do not push this issue, then we will have serious issues’. He pointed to areas like Glengad, Carrowmenagh and Malin Head, where there aren’t enough young people under 12 to form a football team as numbers dwindle.

"That’s what is happening in rural Ireland. We won’t have schools, community centres and football clubs and we have to drive home that we need to build homes in rural Ireland – not just towns and villages. We (council) don’t want to do it, the department doesn’t want to do it and the numbers are deteriorating fast. We have to push this the whole way to the department.”