Mac Donncha criticises government for cutting council housing scheme

Donaghmede councillor Micheál Mac Donncha has criticised the government for forcing Dublin City Council to wind down its Financial Contribution Scheme.

Under the scheme, which was established in 2009, Dublin City Council purchased homes from older people and then provided them with older people’s accommodation.

In most cases, people with bigger houses were able to “downsize” and move into smaller accommodation which was more suited to their specifc needs.

The scheme had the tertiary benefit of increasing the amount of Dublin City Council’s housing stock.

Mac Donncha said that “government cuts to housing funding for Dublin City Council continue to cause damage.”

The news was revealed at a recent meeting of the North Central Area Committee meeting, where councillors found out that Dublin City Council would have to cut the scheme as the Department of Housing has said they would not fund the program going forward.

The Sinn Féin councillor said it was the same principle as the government wanting to cut the Tenant in Situ scheme, despite Dublin City Council passing two unanimous motions calling on the government to keep it.

He commented, “these are the same cuts to funding for housing acquisitions that have hit the very successful tenant-in-situ scheme – that scheme kept hundreds of families out of homelessness.”

“It has now been totally undermined by this Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael/Lowry government, despite Dublin City Council unanimously voting twice in the past month for the scheme to be left in place and properly funded.”

The Donaghmede councillor stated that people in homeless services, the citizens of Dublin and,  councillors, including members of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, have been treated with contempt by the government.

At a special meeting of Dublin City Council in March, Mac Donncha commented that the government cutting of schemes such as the Tenant in Situ scheme was driven by ideology.

“it is quite obvious that key top civil servants and key ministers never wanted this scheme in the first place. It was pioneered here in Dublin, and it was a great success and hundreds of families from homelessness.”

Mac Donncha criticised the government’s track record on housing, with the all-time record highs for homelessness being broken twice since the new government took office in January.

Mac Donncha said the fact that nearly 11,000 people (including 3,434 children) in Dublin are homeless is a “scandal.”

“Many, many thousands more are denied the right to decent housing, paying sky-high rents, and are unable to access either social or affordable homes,” he said.