Revealed: The key issues at the core of Mayo's growing housing crisis

THERE are two big issues around housing: It's unaffordable to build and unaffordable to buy.

This reality was spelt out at a Mayo County Council planning and corporate development strategic policy committee meeting, which saw an extensive discussion on land zoning for housing.

A three-bedroom semi-detached home in Castlebar is costing €375,000, a representative from the Construction Industry Federation highlighted.

This is out of many buyers' reach, and on the other side, for developers, there's huge financial issues in putting homes there in the first place.

For builders, and there are very few operating in the local private market, to buy a site worth, for example, €750,000 meant having to pay for it up front as banks won't support it.

Add in construction materials and costs to build homes, and that's a significant investment before you get a cent back.

New people won't be coming into building private houses as they need huge financial backing and that's not there, the CIF representative said. Whereas moving towards social housing meant there wasn't that speculation for builders.

Councillor Cyril Burke agreed a lot of the development taking place isn't private development.

Developers were looking to approved housing bodies and the council to come on board as they can't get finance.

As a private developer, you don’t get paid until you hand over the keys, he pointed out.

On land zoning generally for housing, Councillor Donna Sheridan said elected members had zoned lands in their local area plans but this was then thrown out by the Planning Regulator and then they can't meet their planning targets.

She described the process as 'nonsensical'.

Director of services Catherine McConnell said there's plenty of land in Mayo that is zoned in strategic reserve, and a simple mechanism could bring them into play if needed to meet housing targets.

She set out how 200 houses have been granted in Castlebar and 147 in Claremorris since the start of the county development plan, so planning is not the issue.

There is little planning justification to move outside of lands that are already zoned.

Ms. McConnell said there is more activity in the housing market in terms of developments being put to the council in bigger towns, with some smaller settlements performing well too. They wanted to make sure most settlements get the opportunity to expand.

Government policy is to build up key towns to be economic drivers of growth in the wider areas.