The history surrounding the sale of this empty site (pictured) which is at the centre of controversy in Knocknacarra stands as a legacy to the excesses of the Celtic Tiger.
It sounds like a Galway-version of a Carry On movie, except the story of Keeraun is no joke.
Developer buys land during boom, and plans to build houses. Just before the bottom falls out of the property market, local authority buys land from the developer.
Local authority pays roughly €4 million more than what the developer had paid, and pledges to build social housing.
Some months later, property market collapses. Ireland becomes bankrupt. Local authority’s income evaporates, and at behest of Government policy, abandons all plans to build new social housing.
The site, along with others across the city, is not accepted in the Government’s NAMA for local authorities, the Land Aggregation Scheme.
This means the Council was obliged to continue to pay the loan it used to acquire the site. The interest-only loan payment on this and other sites will cost the Council around €600,000 in 2017, according to the Council budget meeting; or €4.8 million if extrapolated out over the eight years.
Other than paying interest, local authority does nothing with the site for over eight years. Not one cent has been paid off the actual loan of €10.5 million.
During that time the social housing waiting list soared to 5,000 households, or around 15,000 people, and homelessness became the norm, with 20 rough sleepers on the city’s streets every night.
Meanwhile, the potential of the site, which the local authority paid €10.5 million for, is stunted because now there are plans to build a road through it. The ‘newest’ version of the Galway City Outer Bypass – or Ring Road as it’s now known – will cut through the site, landlocking part of it, and ‘freezing’ part of the site that comes within the road corridor.
And just to add another twist to the tale, the local authority appears to have now abandoned its commitment for social housing for this site, and instead wants to use it for Traveller-specific accommodation, and possibly a halting site.
The history of Keeraun can be traced through extensive documentation released under the Freedom of Information (FOI) and seen by the Galway City Tribune.
For the full story, see this week’s Galway City Tribune
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