Ribbon cut on new social houses on Barrack Street

THE smell of fresh paint and newly laid mulch wafted through the air on Barrack Street in Carlow town on Monday afternoon, 2 March, as a crowd gathered to admire the eight newly completed social housing units.

Minister for housing James Browne cut the ribbon on the homes, alongside MEP Cynthia Ní Mhurchú, minister of state Jennifer Murnane O’Connor, local councillors and former residents.

Denise O’Rourke (83), née Finnegan, was there with her husband Hugh to admire how her former home at number 26 was transformed. She lived on the street until she was 24 years old, when she got married. “It’s lovely to have people coming back to live in the town,” said Hugh. “It’s rejuvenating.” Denise agreed: “New life.” 

“It’s amazing, the view onto the street is the same,” said Carmel Kirwan Fleming, who moved into the two-bedroom cottages in 1969 alongside her nine siblings. “There was no privacy in them days,” she said laughing. While many of the neighbours were elderly, the kids would play across the road on the green where the Fairgreen Shopping Centre now stands. They moved out of Barrack Street and into a bigger house in the 1980s.

The properties, seven two-bed units and one one-bed unit, had been vacant and derelict for several years and represented one of the most visible examples of long-term underuse within Carlow town. The new homes are designed to meet very high energy efficiency standards and be wheelchair accessible. They will be furnished to residents’ tastes with the help of community grants and allocated by Carlow County Council according to its housing allocation scheme.