Housing policy is ‘appalling’ says Limerick city councillor

A LIMERICK councillor has described a new housing policy as “appalling”.

At a full meeting of Limerick City and County Council, councillors approved a new policy which allows only one politician to make representations for social housing on an applicant's behalf.

Before the one-rep policy was adopted, applicants could ask for help from any number of councillors or TDs.

Cllr Elisa O'Donovan was opposed to the policy and described it as “appalling”.

However, the Social Democrats representative was in the minority as councillors were in support of the policy which was then adopted.

Ms O'Donovan claimed the policy implied that councillors or TDs would be doing the job that the local authority should be doing.

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She also argued that the policy favoured big parties within the council.

Meanwhile, councillors stated that the new policy would instead save time for representatives as well as council staff.

Fine Gael councillor and former Mayor of Limerick Daniel Butler said that some people applying for social housing are often in a vulnerable state and the new policy will make their application process easier.

“Some find the process very difficult. We may take the assumption that it is easy to access these services, it is not.”

Joe Leddin, Labour Party councillor said that he believed the one-rep policy was already the accepted policy and that there was “no point” in duplicating the work.

Liam Galvin, Fine Gael councillor for Newcastle West said that Cllr O'Donovan was not correct with her remarks and that she had the “wrong end of the stick.”

There will be a six month review on the new policy at which stage it will be looked at again.