Almost 50,000 await State housing, figures show

Almost 50,000 families are waiting to be housed by local authorities - an increase of over 20 per cent since 1999, figures released by the Department of the Environment show.

But the Housing Statistics Bulletin for the September quarter shows output nationally was 14,944 units up 15.2 per cent on the same quarter in 2001.

In the first nine months of 2002 local authorities built 2,441 new houses - an increase of 15 per cent on the corresponding period last year. Local authorities also acquired 508 homes in the same period. Work was in progress on 7,706 local authority houses - up 18 per cent on the figure for end September 2001.

The overall results indicate that as of March 28th, 2002 a total of 48,413 households were in need of local authority housing compared with 39,176 in 1999 - an increase of 23.5 per cent.