Karen Doyle, the Independents for Change candidate for the Cobh electoral area, has slammed comments by Fine Gael’s Anthony Barry that empty apartment blocks in Carrigtwohill should be “either blown up or demolished”, saying Cllr. Barry and his party and Fianna Fáil must accept responsibility for the housing crisis and for doing nothing about the estate in question for years.

Ms. Doyle said that the Castlelake complex had been completed as a new estate around 2009 but part of it, including the apartment block had ended up in NAMA at the height of the economic crisis. “Since then this block has been boarded up and has decayed rapidly.  Cllr. Barry’s party came to power in 2011 and all that time these homes have gone to rack and ruin.  I agree with him that they apartments may not be the most suitable for families but they should have been offered to people on the housing list when they were still habitable.”

“It may well be that this block will have to be demolished but for Cllr. Barry to suddenly take an interest in the apartments now after passing their boarded up doors for the last few years is a bit rich.  NAMA should have been retasked to offer genuinely affordable homes to rent all who need them and as the basis of a national construction company, instead successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael led governments have used NAMA to rehabilitate speculators and builders and recreate the conditions which caused the crash in the first place”, said Karen Doyle

The Independents 4 Change candidate said that the reliance on the private sector as the primary source of home building must end and that a major programme of public housing construction must start immediately