By Sean Moriarty

We hear every day that there is a housing shortage in Killarney. Things are so bad now that hotels are either building or buying apartment blocks to accommodate staff.

Elected councillors are blue in the face from asking Kerry County Council to build more social housing in the town and the Council are constantly explaining that affordable land is not available in the area.

But the local authority seems reluctant to act on State-owned property, often because the State wants to charge market value for its properties.

What many locals and councillors cannot understand is that if State property is our property, why can’t the lands be handed over to different State bodies that need them – even for a nominal fee.

It was up for debate again this week at a Killarney Municipal District meeting. There were more calls by councillors to build social housing on the old St Finan’s site.

But the Council said it was not willing to take a €100 million risk.

While it sounds feasible to acquire the grassed area of the old hospital site and build houses there, the building which is a protected structure needs massive investment to turn it into anything; from flats or even into a hotel, and no one is willing to risk the reported €100 million outlay to do that. The HSE is only wiling to sell the entire site and even if the Council did manage to buy the grassed area, the derelict hospital would become even more unmanageable in the middle of a housing estate.

Ok, so the town is out of luck in that regard, for the foreseeable anyway.

What about lands at the rear of the Pretty Polly site, once earmarked for housing?

That is another big no from the Council. The Kerry Educational Training Board (KETB) announced before Christmas that it is to build a new Killarney campus on the 'Polly' site.

Once the college is complete there are still lands available towards the rear of the old hosiery factory.

A housing executive from Kerry County Council explained to Wednesday’s meeting that the ‘Polly’ site was no longer being considered for housing “given the other [ETB] announcement”.

The Council said at the meeting it would look in to the process of acquiring the District Hospital and St Columbanus properties once the new community hospital is built.

Our prediction: The latter two named properties will join the growing list of State-owned dereliction in the town. It is one prediction we would like to be proved wrong on!