Dublin City Council has voted to sell off 80 units of public housing at St. Mary’s Mansions in Dublin 1, at its monthly meeting tonight (Monday, May 8th).

At the meeting, Cllr. Éilis Ryan (Workers’ Party) encouraged councillors to vote against the sale. However, although a number of parties including Sinn Féin spoke out against the sale, ultimately all but seven councillors supported the sale.

Cllr. Ryan said:

Many voluntary housing bodies do excellent work. But they are no substitute for decent, large-scale public housing provided directly by the state. Whatever excuses we might get about why we need charities to build more housing in the future, it is totally inappropriate for the council to effectively give away the housing it already owns.

Cllr. Ryan queried why, if the City Council could not provide the housing itself, the Council could not have leased the housing to the housing body rather than sell.

These types of transactions have generally been carried out in the past through a lease rather than a full sale. The council management told councillors that the reason for a sale, rather than lease, is so that the housing body can then borrow against the property.

But this raises the question: if this is such a valuable asset for the housing charity receiving it, why would the Council not want to retain it? Surely, we ourselves should be seeking to borrow against our own assets and invest in building further housing – not give them away?

The councillor concluded:

Clearly, no matter what level of assurances is given to us, selling our assets to an outside body, so they can borrow against them, brings with it risks that that housing will eventually be sold off privately. We need to guard against this, and selling off our assets is not the way to do it.