Half of South Dublin County Council’s budget for housing ‘going on rent’

About half of South Dublin County Council’s housing budget for 2022 is to be spent on rental properties , councillors were told on Wednesday.

Colm Ward, the council’s director of housing, social and community development, told the annual budget meeting of plans to spend €101,829,000 on housing in 2022 – up €6.685 million on last year.

He said the largest portion of the money, some €51.8 million, would be spent on “ongoing provision” of more than 3,000 Rental Accommodation Scheme tenancies, Approved Housing Body payments and leasing other properties

The plan also includes spending of almost €16 million on maintenance for more than 10,000 homes – with some €3.86 million is being set aside for homeless services – either directly provided by the council or through the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive

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Some €1.87million is to be provided for Traveller accommodation maintenance and supports including €50,000 for Traveller-led initiatives

Just over €5.7 million will go to housing welfare services, estate/tenancy management, housing stock insurance and addressing anti-social behaviour.

Speaking at Wednesday’s budget meeting, which was held online, Cllr Cathal King said a few years ago the council would have spent about €90,000 a year on homeless services. He said it was a “sad indictment” of recent governments that the council had to now increase that to €3.86 million.

Mr King also said he was concerned at the large proportion of the council’s budget that was going on rental accommodation.

Cllr Kieran Mahon told the meeting the the council had “a serious issue” in that real estate investment trusts – “or vulture funds” – owned more then 2,000 homes in the council’s administrative area.

“They feature in no way in the income to this county. In fact they take [money] out , in the form of Housing Assistance Payments and rent subsidies etc, which line the pockets of these corporations,” he said. And he added that there should be a measure by which the council could levy some kind of taxation on the corporations, but he recognised it was outside the control of the council management.

Overall the council management proposed a budget of €281,713,700 which represents an increase of just over 5 per cent on 2021. Among the biggest expenditure is €17million for regional and local roads.

The budget also covers:

• An additional €429,000 to cover the cost of 20 seasonal workers to assist with litter management, grass cutting and a specific provision of €100,000 to deal with graffiti and back lanes;
• Pitch and playground maintenance is to be increased by €200,000;
• The Fire Services budget increases by €912,000;
• Tree management will again receive an extra €500,000 additional to the annual maintenance budget, to accelerate delivery on the "Living with Trees" programme;
• Grass cutting funding has been increased by €412,000;
• Library operations expenditure has been increased by €339,000;
• Animal welfare is supported by an additional €153,000;
• Wildflower planting and maintenance receives a further €100,000. The area dedicated to wildflowers is now 145 hectares.