An independent councillor on Meath County Council has called for the speeding up of delivery of affordable and social housing. Nick Killian said that these aspects of housing “tend to be left to the very end” of housing developments instead of at the beginning. He knew the reason for this – developers wanted to sell houses first. Very often developers didn’t see the importance of social housing at an earlier stage. He also drew attention to the very high number of single people aged between 40 and 65 needing accommodation. “I’ve been saying this for the last couple of meetings”.
As of October last there were 449 applicants aged 55 of over who were single-adult households on the council’s social waiting list. He felt that the list of applicants was growing because landlords were selling up. In Ratoath in the past few weeks they had the opportunity of delivering 14 Part 8 houses and this was very important for elderly people, he said. He said older people were “quite frightened” when they come in to public representatives about their situation.
Sinn Fein Cllr Helen Meyer said she would like to get more information about retail strategy of the council in terms of forward planning. A retail survey was in progress at the moment. She wondered when that would be finished and what the council intended to do with the results, whether these would be shared with councillors. The results would impact on how the “high street” was managed. She also said she was looking forward to seeing the Meath biodiversity plan being finished. There was concern about the number of trees being cut down in certain developments.
