At Monday’s Meath County Council meeting, Cllr. Damien O’Reilly requested Meath County Council to provide, in tabular format, the social housing need for each housing application for every settlement in Meath’s towns, villages and townlands.
These stark figures released do not include first time buyers in each of Meath’s towns, villages and townlands looking to buy homes in their local areas and also the need to house the county’s share of Ireland’s near 100,000 refugees escaping wars and famines.
Cllr. O’Reilly advises that the National Planning Framework and the Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy policies are fuelling the housing crisis, flawed national policy with predicted inaccurate census population allocations that Census 2022 has proven as totally inaccurate leading to residential de-zoning across Meath therefore fuelling the county’s housing crisis.
Councillors across Ireland have pointed these matters out for years and no one has listened to successive governments or the officials in the departments with the real powers to change policy with now the end result of another 10 years of this housing crisis ahead as young Irish professionals now emigrate for cheaper rent.
Cllr. O’Reilly stated “I don’t know of one person that has moved their families from Meath, Kildare, and Fingal as per the National Planning Frameworks, balanced regional growth to Sligo, Galway, Limerick, Cork, and Waterford and so on.
National policy is now fuelling the housing crisis, Housing for All, €4 Billion a year will not provide affordability in the east of Ireland particularly, Meath, Kildare and Fingal until the government uses executive powers and functions to zone additional residentials land.
Affordability equals Zone increased land banks, increased supply of zoned residential land therefore lowering the input cost of service sites, the final product is a cheaper house for first time buyers.
Removing so many functions from Councillors has fuelled Ireland’s Housing Crisis, Governments have come and gone, but the same officials are lingering around the Custom House.
Meath South East News 