Council recoups just €283k of €1.5m defective concrete repair bill - Donegal Daily

Donegal County Council has recouped less than one-fifth of the €1.5 million it has spent on essential repairs to defective concrete social homes.New figures sho...

Donegal County Council has recouped less than one-fifth of the €1.5 million it has spent on essential repairs to defective concrete social homes.

New figures show that €1,509,014 has been spent on emergency repairs to affected Council homes, but just €283,571 has been recouped from the Department of Housing.

The figures prompted fresh concern at this week's Letterkenny-Milford Municipal District meeting over how the much larger social housing remediation programme will be funded.

Cllr Tómas Seán Devine said it was “not good enough” that the Council was being left so heavily out of pocket.

“That’s probably money we could be using for our own housing maintenance that we’re losing out on.”

The 100% Redress Party Councillor added that the scale of the DCB problem in social housing was “massive” and questioned whether the figures currently available show the full extent of it.

“We don’t even know what the Council is going to be out of pocket or where they’re going to get this money," he said, as the draft Defective Concrete Block Social Homes Scheme was handed over last week.

Cllr Devine said social housing tenants were contacting him regularly looking for a date on when works would actually begin.

“There are people packing, thinking this is going to be starting very shortly, and in reality it’s not.”

He warned: “We’re a minimum of 12 months away from even doing anything.”

“We still don’t know what’s happening as a Council, and I’ll continue to keep raising it.”

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The latest Council figures also underline the scale of the problem across the Letterkenny-Milford Municipal District.

Visual surveys have been carried out on 869 Council-owned properties.

Of these, 250 are Category 3, where pattern cracking is evident at the property, while 190 are Category 4, where significant pattern cracking is evident.

That means 440 Council homes have cracking evident at the property itself, including 190 with significant pattern cracking.

The remaining 429 homes surveyed showed no cracking, but there was cracking observed elsewhere in the estates they were situated in.

Independent Cllr Declan Meehan said the scale of the problem is going to prove "extremely challenging" for the Council, "but not as challenging as it will be for our tenants.”

The warning comes as Donegal faces the mammoth task of repairing or replacing defective social homes while also trying to build enough new houses for people already waiting for somewhere to live.

Cllr Meehan said the challenge was particularly stark in the Milford Electoral Area, where 244 Council homes are included in the DCB survey while there is a similar number of households on the social housing waiting list.

“Housing development is moving too slowly to meet the demand that's there," he said.

“When we look at what needs to be done to replace DCB affected social homes as well, we are taking two steps forward and one step back.

Councillors received the Government's draft DCB Social Homes Scheme last week, and temporary accommodation quickly emerged as one of the biggest concerns.

Cllr Meehan said the current proposal does not go far enough.

“The scheme as it is presented currently does not give sufficient latitude to Donegal County Council in terms of funding temporary accommodation, and that needs to be resolved.”