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OPINION: Council reluctant to buy State-owned property for housing

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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!

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Developing St Finan’s “cost prohibitive” – Council

Converting the idle St Finan’s hospital into social housing is cost-prohibitive according to Kerry County council officials. The historic building has been lying idle since it closed in September 2012. […]

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Converting the idle St Finan’s hospital into social housing is cost-prohibitive according to Kerry County council officials.

The historic building has been lying idle since it closed in September 2012.

The hospital and adjoining lands are up for sale by the Health Service Executive (HSE) since then.

So far no realistic offer has been made on the site despite suggestions that it could be used for social housing, a catering college and a hotel.

Each year the building, which was built in the 1850s, falls into further disrepair.

There were fresh calls again this week as local councillors called for some sort of action to redevelop the site that is fast becoming an eyesore.

At last Friday’s Killarney Municipal District meeting councillors called for action at the site .

Mayor Brendan Cronin wants the building’s protected status to be removed or at least reduced to speed up potential development work which ties in with Cllr Marie Moloney’s idea that the old hospital could be converted into apartments or flats.

Cllr John O’Donoghue wants the HSE to find a way to hand over the property to Kerry County Council either by way of reduced payment or an intra-government agency ownership change.

A Kerry County Council official told the meeting that any works to potentially convert the old hospital into social housing “would be cost prohibitive.”

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Eight month wait for a driving test in Killarney

A Killarney councillor is calling for action in an effort to reduce the driving test wait list in Killarney The current wait list for a test in Killarney sits at […]

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A Killarney councillor is calling for action in an effort to reduce the driving test wait list in Killarney

The current wait list for a test in Killarney sits at eight months.

Cllr John O’Donoghue raised the issue at Monday’s full meeting of Kerry County Council.

He proposed that driving instructors should be employed to carry out the final test to reduce the current backlog.

At Monday’s meeting he asked that hat Kerry County Council would write to the Minister for Transport to ask him to consider giving driving instructors temporary powers to issue a temporary Driving Licence/Certificate of Competence to those on the waiting list for tests.

“The wait is currently far too long and the system is in danger of becoming completely overwhelmed,” he said.

“The huge waiting list for young drivers is well documented at this stage. In a case I am familiar with, a young person passed their theory test in January 2022 and he immediately applied for his mandatory 12 driving lessons. When these were completed, he applied for his driving test on the 2nd of December 2022. Some weeks ago, he still had not received an application to apply for his driving test. This wait is placing him and his family under considerable extra cost and stress which is completely unacceptable.”

In the course of his research into the matter Cllr O’Donoghue discovered that the next available date for a driving test in Killarney is May 25, 2024, while Tralee is June 3 2024.

“Bear in mind, these are only the dates on which you receive an invitation to book your test, the test itself will then be an estimated three to five weeks later.

“This is an appalling situation and one which needs to be rectified as a matter of urgency. I am proposing that driving instructors, which presumably are fully trained up on the rules of the road, be granted temporary powers to be allowed to issue temporary driving licences to young people. When the waiting list time has been reduced, I would still propose that these people sit the test as usual, but the current pressure needs to be alleviated as soon as possible. There is precedent as I believe that in the 1970s, a cohort in this country were issued driving licences without having sat a test as the wait time for the test was too long.”

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