Published: Friday, 4th September, 2009 10:00am

Housing waiting list reaches almost 900 in Tullamore town

Seven years to clear existing backlog

There are almost 900 households on Tullamore Town Council's housing waiting list, according to the latest figures.

Tullamore Town Council is facing a housing crises, as there is what staff call a "huge backlog" at the moment and no finance available to help alleviate the growing problem.

According to the latest statistics from the Department of Environment in March 2008, there were a total of 596 outstanding applications for local authority housing in Tullamore Town Council.

This means that the housing list has increased by around 400 households in less than 18 months.

According to the Department figures, over half of these applications - 303 - have to wait between one to four years to be housed and more than half have to wait up to four years before they are housed by the council.

Almost one fifth or 134 households, have to wait one to two years to be housed, while 104 have to wait two to three years.

Only 32 are on the housing waiting list for up to three months, 35 have to wait three to six months, 74 have to wait six to 12 months, 75 will have to wait three to four years, 62 will have to wait four to five years, 59 five to seven years and 21 will have to wait more than seven years.

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