The four main local authorities in the Mid-West have put in place strategies to tackle the housing crisis in the region. However, the plans were dismissed yesterday by the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) as "meaningless" in seeking to address the problem.
The draft housing strategies are on display in Limerick, Clare and North Tipperary. They outline the policies which the local authorities believe will achieve their target by 2006. The population in the Mid-West is expected reach 345,756 by that date.
All strategies, required to be put in place by the Planning and Development Act, 2000, contain the contentious provision requiring developers to allocate up to 20 per cent of land for social and affordable houses.
The strategies also propose to zone additional land for housing and Limerick Corporation, Limerick County Council and Clare County Council plan to adopt a single affordable housing scheme. Under this scheme, the three local authorities are also proposing joint waiting lists for affordable homes and in some cases the reservation of land by one authority on behalf of another to meet affordable housing demand.
Each plan also comes with ambitious targets: Clare County Council estimates that 1,313 houses must be built each year in Clare until 2006, of which 324 are to be affordable and social housing.
Limerick Corporation estimates it must provide 318 local authority houses per year to meet the social and affordable housing demand.
However, figures show the magnitude of the task facing the local authorities. This follows a significant drop in private housing construction this year, while the local authorities all recorded a poor year in house building last year.
In the private sector, the number of house starts in Limerick in the first six months of this year is down 46 per cent on the corresponding period in 2000, from 885 units to 471. Similar trends are found in Clare and Tipperary. The number of house starts in Clare for the first six months this year is down 38 per cent while the drop in Tipperary is 46 per cent.
All figures compare to a national drop of 22.6 per cent.
In the public sector, the figures are even starker. Last year, local authorities in Co Clare managed to build only 20 houses, a drop of 81 per cent on 1999 figures; in Tipperary North Riding only 13 houses were built - a drop of 75 per cent on the previous year.
Local authorities in Limerick also experienced drops in house construction. Limerick County Council built 36 houses - a drop of 36 per cent on 1999 while Limerick Corporation built 45 houses - a drop of 16 per cent.
However, spokesmen for Limerick Corporation and Clare County Council said yesterday they are confident of achieving their targets in relation to social housing provision.
The senior planner with Limerick Corporation, Mr Dick Tobin, said: "Between construction and acquisitions we provide 120 social homes on average per annum over the past number of years, so I would be confident that we would reach our targets."
A spokesman for Clare County Council said he was "perfectly satisfied" the council would achieve its target of 310 house starts by the end of 2003.
The Mid-West chairman of the CIF, Mr Tony O'Shea, said that rather than provide a solution, Government intervention had contributed to the massive downturn in construction. He said: "The figures in the MidWest speak for themselves. The 2000 Act and the resultant strategies have brought uncertainty into the market and that has resulted in less houses being built.
"The Government must stop tampering with the market, because the provision of reserving 20 per cent of developments will count for very little if so few houses are being built."