Mayor of Limerick John Moran pledges €1m as he looks to Vienna for solutions to crisis

MAYOR John Moran has said housing “is the number one priority” as he outlined plans for council to indirectly rent homes using a model common in central Europe.

The executive mayor has allocated €6.4m of his annual devolved funding to housing across Limerick city and county.

And €1m of this is dedicated to the so-called Vienna Model of housing.

Named after the Austrian capital, this is a system where the State actively provides and regulates housing to keep it affordable, high-quality and widely accessible, with the income generated from rents delivering more houses.

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As a local authority, Limerick City and County Council is not permitted to run such a scheme - but one of its arm’s length companies can do.

Mayor Moran has identified the council’s development firm Limerick Twenty Thirty to deliver this.

“If good accommodation becomes available that we can buy, instead of using it for social housing, this year we are running a pilot project which we term Vienna Housing, where we will use Limerick Twenty Thirty to acquire these buildings, get them ready for rental and rent them in the open market,” he explained.

“As we would be in charge of the allocations and the terms, we can essentially make our own rules to protect tenants around tenure,” he added.

The €1m he has put into Vienna Housing, the mayor hopes, will act as seed capital to allow Limerick Twenty Thirty to borrow more money and be able to supply more homes in the coming years.

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He said council has already bought and renovated derelict properties in Abbeyfeale - which he has designated as a ‘Town of the Future’ - and is now planning to sell them onto Limerick Twenty Thirty to allow them to be used for rental, as a Vienna Model pilot.

Mayor Moran said it’s his goal for 2026 to have a number of pilots under the Vienna Model in place.

He did admit that it’s been something of a hard sell to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

“It’s a new innovation for the department. It’s fair to say they are struggling with understanding why we are doing this, rather than putting houses on the open market. But what I want to do is find a solution so that we can control the rental of those properties, rather than relying on landlords, who may not be from Abbeyfeale, or may have a desire in a couple of years’ time to sell on a property and put those people into a tailspin not knowing where they will live,” he said.

In his funding allocations for this year, the mayor is planning to spend €1.4m on his flagship smart housing, using modular units to develop temporary homes on council-owned land.

The majority, €3.9m, is being spent on purchasing a tract of land in Patrickswell, which will be used to facilitate housing.

He said a large amount of the remainder of his €14m expenditure for the year is driven by housing provision.

“A lot of the other measures are about making the places people live more liveable, or having different amenities or transport-orientated development,” he said.

Some €350,000 is being dedicated to ‘greening’ Georgian Limerick - plus a carry over from last year of €60,397.

A total of €150,000 is down for public realm works in Nicholas Street.

Elsewhere, a park is being developed on the site of the former Longpavement Dump on the city’s northside, a move which will see spend of more than half a million euro.