Time to get cracking on Mayo housing problem

by Auld Stock

THE question of house building in Mayo has become a hot topic at meetings of the municipal authorities in the county.

Councillor Michael Kilcoyne has lacerated the government for their abject failure to build houses in County Mayo.

The majority of Mayo people will agree with this view.

Our Dáil deputies must be feeling the heat, their ears burning with flushed faces.

When there was far less money in the country thousands of houses were built to accommodate workers and their families.

For example, a Fianna Fáil government in the early 1930s, led by Éamon De Valera, built thousands of houses all over Ireland, including 116 houses in Castlebar, later named McHale Road.

This was just a few years after this state was set up.

Some years ago, a government, led by Liam Cosgrave and Brendan Corish, built thousands of houses.

There now appears to be a fair bit of cross-party support for the building of houses in Mayo.

Councillor Brendan Mulroy of the Fianna Fáil Party has suggested that councils should borrow money to build houses.

This is a sensible suggestion and one the executive of the council should take seriously.

I recently met a young man who works in Castlebar and who has to travel a long distance to his place of employment each day.

He has tried his damndest to get accommodation in Castlebar but all his efforts have ended in failure.

The question of housing will probably be a make or break problem for the government in the next general election.

If they want to hold on to power they better get on their bikes and start digging foundations and laying cement blocks.

That’s about the size of it.

Get cracking, please!

*By the way, when the McHale Road housing scheme in Castlebar was built over eighty years ago, it would have cost just four old pennies to include a bathroom in the buildings. The council members decided against the idea, claiming it would be an unfair imposition on the ratepayers of Castlebar.