By Catherine Cook

DONEGAL County Council is making significant advances towards dealing with the provision of local authority housing.

Figures published for 2008 show that Donegal's local authority housing stock is almost full to capacity, stating that of the 4,134 units under the council's control all but 78 were occupied last year.

While the figures may indicate a lack of local authority housing stock available in Donegal, Cllr Dessie Larkin confirmed that considerable efforts are being made to address the problem.

Speaking to the Donegal News, Cllr Larkin, Chairperson of the County's SPC on housing stated: "The first thing reflected in these figures is that the Council's stock of housing is not lying empty. We have been criticised in the past for not addressing the problem that exists in relation to the provision of housing."

Cllr Larkin stressed, however, that with a deficit of the previous large number of turn key houses, the way forward was going to be very different and would provide a much more effective and efficient method of allocating local authority housing.

"The big thing for the Council at the moment is leasing. We now have the power to go in and lease houses for 20 to 25 years. This gives the tenants a very strong security of tenure and will go a long way towards eradicating the huge bill for rent supplement which is effectively dead money."

Cllr Larkin said at one point, the Council's rent supplement bill was ¤20 million, adding that this money would be much better invested in the leasing of houses.

"That amount of money is hard to justify and is not the best use of resources," he explained.

"The only downside with leasing is that people don't have the option to buy out from the council, and I suppose it's something that's ingrained in the Irish psyche that people like to own their own home," said Cllr Larkin. However, the leasing option is much more beneficial because it means that people don't have to get tied down with mortgages."

Outlining the other options available to the Local Authority, Cllr Larkin added: "We also have the RAS scheme which means that clients can extend their contracts after 18 months on rent supplement."

Cllr Larkin explained there are, at present, approximately 1,100 families on the Local Authority Housing list. He added, however, that there has been a significant change in the status of applicants applying for LA housing.

"Typically we would have seen a lot of applications from what could be defined as the 'nuclear family', but now there are an increasing number of single people looking for housing. One if the reasons is that there are a number of voluntary groups who work with the Council to address specific needs."

Cllr Larkin explained the Council were also working on a policy to try and alleviate a backlog in processing applications for Local Authority housing.

"There are measures being put in place to provide a more efficient system for local authority housing. And the Council are going a long way towards addressing the problem."