Barrack Street houses are ‘practically completed’
Image © Bluett & O'Donoghue Architects / Tom O'Brien Construction.
THE eight pastel-coloured housing units on Barrack Street are ‘substantially completed’, councillors learned at the 12 January meeting of Carlow County Council. Director of services Fiona O’Neill said the council expected to hand them over towards the end of January.
In Tullow, Ms O’Neill said the allocation of the 48 Tullowbeg units has been pushed back to March due to ESB delays, but the 21 Thomas Traynor Road units are due to be allocated this month.
The council is aware of 45 people with valid notices to quit their privately-rented homes and chief executive Coilín O’Reilly, a supporter of the tenant in situ scheme, said he had written to central government’s housing department requesting €10.5 million to acquire the properties. “I’d be keen that we can keep as many of those people living in those properties as possible,” he said.
“In my opinion, it’s one of the best schemes out there. It allows the people to stay in the home that they’ve been renting under RAS or HAP. It allows the children to stay. It gives you a social mix and it’s in a private estate. People know who their neighbours are already. The landlord can sell the house to the state or local authority. It’s far cheaper than buying an existing home for €250,000. It would cost you a lot more to build it than that in the current day and age,” said Mr O’Reilly.
As context, the council spent or committed €3.5m on housing in 2025.
Ms O’Neill said that there were 77 units completed under the energy retrofit programme in 2025, exceeding the Department of Housing target of 70, at a cost of €38,000 per unit.
The council announced that it has appointed two additional property inspectors, who will concentrate on private rented dwellings and on doing stock condition surveys of units.
To satisfy the curiosity of councillors, the council committed to writing a report on who owes what and for how long they have owed it in terms of development levies. But Mr O’Reilly refused to consider localising the tax.
“The logic of it is, it all goes into a big pot. If you ringfence it on a town basis, you might have three or four great years in Bagenalstown. Lots of houses coming, lots of factories. That’s brilliant. And then nothing happens for 20 years. So, it is always on a county-wide basis.”
