It emerged at January’s Council meetings that some local construction companies are refusing to undertake work for the Council because it takes so long to be paid.
There seems to be a significant delay in payment for works to facilitate mobility grants. These grants allow those with an income of less than €37,500 to receive funding of up to €8,000 for features like grab rails, accessible showers, ramps, stair lifts, and fixed hoists.
Many of these grants are used by older people and those with additional physical needs.
Explaining the importance of the Mobility Grants at the January Meeting for the Comeragh district, Fine Gael Councillor, Liam Brazil, said, “I do believe that these mobility grants should be brought forward, people that want the mobility grants want that grant fairly soon because if somebody went into hospital in the morning and they can be told their house is not fit for use.
[The Mobility Grant] that’s freeing up a bed in the hospital, it’s freeing up a bed in the care choice, it is so important that people can go home and be allowed to live and die in dignity in their own home.”
Delayed Payments
The issue of delayed payments was raised at the January meeting for the Metropolitan Area by Independent Councillor, Joe Kelly.
“How long is a reasonable amount for builders/workers to wait for payments?” asked Councillor Kelly. “Only today I had a phone call for someone who is waiting 4 months and sometimes up to 6 months, and this has been asked before.”
“So what’s considered a reasonable time for payment? That, to me, seems to be too long. Some workers and some builders have started not taking work from the Council anymore because they can’t afford it.
“…back to my comments at the last meeting there, everything is slow, almost morbidly slow and this is another example of it. It’s going on for years.
“This thing about having to wait for reports, having to wait for this, having to wait for that, we seem to wait forever for everything in this Council, we do nothing quickly.”
This final comment drew a pointed response from Claire Hartley, Acting Director of Services with Waterford City and County Council, who said, “I take a step back on behalf of the staff certainly for Waterford Council that we do nothing quickly, I think I would have to take some defence of that and say that our staff do a lot things quickly, and some things do take time. I would like to say that back from the Executive.”
This particular issue is not confined to the City however, as Councillors from the Comeragh region, raised almost identical concerns in relation to similar housing grants.
“I haven’t seen this before where there have been such a delay in the payment of disabled persons grants to the applicants, who in-turn pays the builder,” said Fianna Fáil Councillor John O’Leary.
“What is happening now,” he continued, “is the message coming back very clearly from builders is that they are not going to engage or be interested in doing work which involves these grants because of the undue delay in payment, which makes it very difficult for applicants to get people to do these kind of work.
In reply to Councillor Kelly, a representative from the Housing Department said that they were having to restructure the team responsible for these payments partially due to a staff illness.
“We are currently in process of restructuring the team that administers those grants. There was a period of illness before Christmas where there was team members missing, that’s something we have at hand at the minute and we are restructuring within our teams.”
The same representative also informed Comeragh Councillors that the issue was due to the volume of applications, something they are also hoping to address by restructuring.
Delays with processing
However, it would seem these issues are not limited to the payments but also extend to the processing of applications. The matter was highlighted by Sinn Féin Councillor, Catherine Burke, who said vulnerable applicants are living with holes in their roofs while waiting for funding that they should qualify for.
“The answer I got at Plenary was there is an exceptional amount of applications going through at the moment and that is why it is taking a while to process them.
“Looking at the Comeragh Report, in November 2025 there were 7 applications in total. What I would like to ask the Housing Department today is could those housing applications be processed and expedited, and could the applicants be made aware of the outcome, maybe yesterday?”
AARON KENT
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme
