Social Housing Figures Need To Be More Transparent - Murphy

There are calls to make the choice based letting system from the council more transparent for councillors and the public.

Councillor Barbara Anne Murphy says the current system of recording who from the social housing list is offered a house is confusing and distorting the reality.

In the first six months of the year 169 properties were advertised by the council with almost 15 and a half thousand expressions of interest by social housing applicants.

It's believed the practice of applicants applying for multiple houses is leading to inflated expressions of interest figures.

Councillor Murphy says this makes it difficult to find out the true level of social housing need here:

"In the Enniscorthy District, there was 36 properties advertised between 1st January to the 30th of June and there were 3,323 expressions of interest.

"I'd just like to see that we know, more clearly, how many people are actually expressing an interest.

"It's just not easy to work out what it means for anyone who's on our housing list, trying to see if they're going to get a house."

Councillor Murphy put forward a motion at yesterday's meeting of the Enniscorthy Municipal District asking for the figures to be released weekly so it'll be easier to follow, something the council said they would look into.

She feels the information is already in the system, it just needs to be communicated in a better way.

"There's nothing being hidden, it just doesn't give us exactly what we would probably need to know.

"They will try to see if there is a way that they can give us the information that we need.

"There's nothing guaranteed, the system may not do it but I think any Excel sheet should be able to do it."

That report was funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.