Council Briefs: Call for urgent meeting with Housing Minister gets no response, and delays in processing applications for HAP

Council invitation to Housing Minister gets no response

At a special meeting of Dublin City Council on 8 July, councillors called for an urgent meeting with Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien, the Fianna Fáil TD, over the prices of “affordable” homes at the new Oscar Traynor Woods development in Coolock.

But when councillors returned from their August break for their September monthly meeting on Monday, and independent Councillor John Lyons asked about O’Brien’s reply, Lord Mayor James Geoghegan said the council hadn’t received one.

“I’m advised that there hasn’t been a response to date,” said Geoghegan, a Fine Gael councillor, at the council’s monthly meeting on Monday at Mansion House.

“None at all?” Lyons asked.

“That’s what I’m advised by the chief executive’s office,” Geoghegan said.

“But we did send correspondence seeking a meeting?” Lyons asked.

“Yeah, I can confirm that correspondence was issued,” Geoghegan said.

“What a complete lack of respect for the elected members here,” Lyons said.

Asked about the lack of response, a spokesperson for the Department of Housing said on Tuesday evening by email that “Due to an administrative oversight the correspondence was overlooked”.

“The initial correspondence was brought to our attention this morning by DCC and an acknowledgment issued,” the spokesperson said. “The request will be now brought to the Minister’s attention and a response issued as a matter of urgency.”

The response did not mention anything about whether O’Brien would meet with councillors.

In June, the council said that the 197 affordable purchase homes due to be built as part of Oscar Traynor Woods would cost up to €500,000. Although the homeowner could get in for less because the council will take an equity stake in the home.

These prices were much higher than those published by council officials when they agreed to the scheme in November 2021. The most costly home would be €306,000, said to a council report from the time.

At a special meeting in July about the development, seven Sinn Féin councillors plus Lyons and Social Democrats Councillor Cat O’Driscoll proposed a motion calling for an urgent meeting with the housing minister about this, minutes show.

The motion said the prices “cannot be described in any way as affordable”. “This is in clear breach of the commitments given at the time of the sale of this formerly public land”, the motion said, to developer Glenveagh, with councillors’ approval in 2021.

The commitment had been “that homes would be affordable and that this scheme would offer to working people the opportunity to purchase homes denied to them in the open market”, the motion said.

Delays in processing HAP applications

Also at Monday’s monthly meeting, Right to Change Councillor Pat Dunne said he was concerned about delays in the council’s processing of applications for housing subsidies.

The number of people who are homeless keeps hitting new records.

“We’re in a situation this summer that is probably worse than any time that I’ve been on this council and this is the beginning of my fourth term here,” Dunne said.

Housing subsidies HAP and Homeless HAP are key tools for the council to keep people from becoming homeless, by helping them be able to afford to pay rent.

“Recently I’ve noticed a long delay in processing HAP and Homeless HAP applications and with potential tenants in the private sector being in danger of losing the tenancies because of those delays,” Dunne said.

Frank D’Arcy, an assistant chief executive at the council, said that this was “something that I wasn’t aware of and I will follow up with it”.

Kelsey May Daly, then a People Before Profit councillor, in May asked council managers about delays in processing of HAP applications.

The written reply from the chief executive, Richard Shakespeare, said that the council’s HAP section “is currently processing approximately 210 applications per month and it is a priority for the section to process each application in a timely manner”.

“Some applications are taking some time to process due to insufficient documentation being submitted and this can cause delays,” he said.

“Staff have been doing overtime to clear the backlog and have made inroads in to the workload, should any applicant be at risk of losing the offer of a tenancy, staff in the section can prioritise such an application,” he said.