Fianna Fail Councillor Sean Drew asked questions about the vacant property regeneration grant applications at the June meeting of  Meath County Council. He said he had noticed that there were 389 applications and 88 were withdrawn (23% of the total) . Of the 389 applications 80 had been approved (20%). The scheme as open since July 2022. There were obviously issues with the scheme, he said, and he wondered what they were.

Four years on they had just 80 approvals in the entire county. If the scheme was not operating on the ground then local councillors would have to go back to Oireachtas members and raise these issues. “We need to make some amendments to the scheme to make sure it works”, he added.

Rentals
Sinn Fein Cllr Helen Meyer had a question on rental accommodation inspections. She said she noticed the number of inspections appeared to be dropping from 49, then 324, 325. “I just wondered who they were going down. Housing Officer Fiona Fallon said that some staff had been on sick leave and the Easter holiday had intervened, leading to a drop but the councillors could be assured they would reach their annual target of 25% of registered properties would be met.

She also said that Ashbourne did not seem to be getting the same level of grants as other areas when it came to the Community Climate Action Programme, where Ashbourne received 5% whereas Kells received 42% of the grants. When it came to Community Amenity Grants, the same applied. If people or groups were not successful in getting grants, she wondered what the council could do to help them. She wanted to see equity in the system. The present situation left people disheartened.

Water Woes
The council chief executive Kieran Kehoe referred to water outages in the county. He said he did not want to sound like a broken record but utilities like Irish Water were not under the control of the council. However, he appreciated the seriousness of the issue. People were living with this issue every month or every weekend . There was a process in place in which Irish water could meet councillors. He would make sure that would happen as soon as possible.

Independent Cllr Noel French said the council was about to bring in a variation which would see more houses being built in the county. Irish Water would tell them there was plenty of water. The houses would be built but people would still have to face the same problem.

Housing
The high demand for housing in the county was demonstrated through information given to the councillors by Housing Officer Fiona Fallon who said that when an affordable housing scheme at Bennetstown, Dunb0yne was opened for applications within 48 hours 95 completed applications were submitted for 62 houses. Council staff were going through those applications. Not everyone would be eligible or might not meet the criteria but within the next couple of weeks the three-bed units would be allocated and from then on the council would be engaging with developers to try to increase the level of affordable housing in the county.