Report Paul Murphy
A public bike share scheme for the whole of county Meath should be a priority, a Fine Gael councillor has told Meath County Council. Alan Tobin said that the money was there and the council should try to get the resources to push it out. There had been a scheme around Ashbourne and it was a great success, he said. He also raised the issue of courtesy crossings in the county. He said motorists did not treat them in the same way as pedestrian crossings. He also asked how many applications had gone in for affordable housing schemes. The cllr also asked when the next Uisce Eireann workshop would be held.
Separately, Sinn Fein Cllr Fionnan Blake welcomed progress in the housing sector, especially the age-friendly homes which were badly needed everywhere. At the same time homelessness was rising and “we are still a long way off recovery”. He understood that social housing rents were calculated under the differential rent scheme but he felt that impacts were being felt on single working parents. “I think they are being absolutely nailed in this system. Many are finding it hard to pay rents. In some cases they are paying high rents at a time of a cost of living crisis”.
Sinn Fein Cllr Helen Meyer queried the location of houses being built in Ashbourne. She said she was not sure where Frederick Court was but assumed it was near Dunnes Stores (Director of Housing Fiona Fallon confirmed it was in the vicinity of Dunnes). She said she hoped the council could get core “assisted living” housing. She also wanted to know how many of the enforcement notices issue where related to the environment. It seemed to her that some builders were not complying in their treatment of trees and hedgerows.
Aontu Cllr Dave Boyne said he had got a call from a family on Hap. The self-employed husband in the household earned €11,000 last year and who was now being asked to provide his accounts to enable him to stay in the Hap house. “He can’t afford to pay €1,500 to have these accounts done, it’s just not going to be possible for him to do. Surely if the Revenue Commissioners accept his accounts and a chartered accountant puts their name on the accounts, that should be good enough. Has the strategic policy committee looked at this rule and put it back the way it used to be” He also raised the issue of homelessness. He said he noted that 12 people applied for emergency accommodation because of “house surfing”. He wondered if that figure was for the entire county because he believed there were at least 12 such cases in Trim alone.
Sinn Fein Cllr Michael Gallagher said the roads of North Meath were “in a mess, and an embarrassment to the councillors and the council itself”. “We need to take action, we can’t continue with this. It’s a pure mess”.
Fianna Fail Cllr Padraig Fitzsimons, referring to the Hap scheme, asked what happened to persons in accommodation where the premises was damp and continually failing assessments.
Independent Cllr Alan Lawes said the figures he had seen for homeless people suggested to him that there was a big problem in emergency accommodation. He said 10 people had been “terminated” from emergency accommodation. He wondered why that was the case. He knew that some of that was not the responsibility of the county council, some of it lay with the Hse. There were a lot of people with mental health problems coming through the emergency accommodation and basically not getting the surround supports they needed and “they are put back on the streets again”. He suggested that some people were sick, they needed help and sometimes a bed alone did not help them.
Referring to poor conditions in some accommodation he said that there was a time when they spoke in the council about inspections of bad accommodation and when years went by without any prohibition notices being issued to landlords with sub-standard premises but he noticed that in the last month the council had issued five prohibition notices. “It looks like the Meath County Council prohibition regime is working. There has been responses to improvement notices given out and were withdrawn where accommodation was brought up to standard and I would compliment the council on that, that we have made huge improvements from a year or two ago when there wasn’t one prohibition notice issued”.
Director of Services for Housing Fiona Fallon said she did not have a hand the social housing delivery for 2026 but she said the department’s target could be “exceeded again”. Referring to Hap she said that this was something that was being reviewed at national level and she said the council had flagged that Meath was very close to Dublin and would have a tendency to have higher rents ss a result and they were trying to see that people were not placed at a disadvantage when they had to make up the difference themselves. It was expected that there would be an outcome from the national deliberations in the next quarter of the year.
The official said that the Minister for Housing had given Meath a €5.7 million allocation last year which would cover secondhand acquisitions, exit from homeless, disability and as a last resort tenant in situ.
On the question of audited accounts for Hap she said that these were required under the legislation. The council had raised the issue with the Government department and it had replied that audited accounts were required. “There is some discretion but very little that the local authority would have. One instance might be where a person would have a disability allowance and as to whether they would be a conflict about whether the disability was the main income or whether the person was a sole trader. The Department very clearly set out that audited accounts are required.”
