*Photograph: Joe Buckley
GREATER FOCUS is needed on affordable housing within Co Clare to help more young people get on the property ladder, Deputy Joe Carey (FG) has said.
New mortgage customers need significantly higher incomes than the past in order to get a house.
One person in 10 is an adult living in their parents’ home, that’s half a million people in Ireland. There are 350,000 young adults aged between 20 and 35 living at home with their parents. The average age of leaving home has now risen to 28. Back in the early 1990s, most people in Ireland aged 28 owned their own home.
Housing is the most common topic that constituents contact Clare TD, Joe Carey (FG) about. “It is a complex issue, we’ve seen since the Housing for All document was produced, we’re one year into it but the targets set have been reached and even overtaken, we need to keep that momentum going, we need to build a whole range of social and affordable housing, we need affordable housing in Co Clare, particularly around the urban areas of Ennis right through to Clarecastle, Newmarket-on-Fergus and onto Shannon, there is a huge shortage of housing and we need to produce schemes that enable people to buy their own homes, affordable housing is the way forward I think.
“It is encouraging to see some private developments being applied for at least, in Co Clare 153 social housing units were opened when Minister O’Brien was here, a lot of those houses took a lot of time to be developed, we need that momentum up, Clare County Council have done a good job on that, they hope to be ahead of their targets on that. I look forward to working with them on that, I’d like to see a lot more done on affordable housing and give opportunities to young people to get on the housing ladder”.
He added, “Housing would be the issue that my office is contacted on the most, housing is a massive issue for people, we need to roll out a programme that works. We have done quite well on social housing but affordable housing is a big issue, we need to kick on with it and develop plans in urban areas of Co Clare to give opportunities to young people to get on the housing ladder”.
