Executive Architect for Kilkenny Council, Richard Vaughan addressed the Piltown Municipal District Council meeting on November 5 last, to outline a new housing project for the Ashgrove estate in Slieverue.
“We are proposing 13 units. By the main road we are proposing 8 apartments and then 5 houses at the back of the estate, with a car park in the middle and a small green area to the side. It will be 4 two-bed apartments, and 4 one-bed apartments in a two story block…all apartments will have their own door access, there will be no common areas,” he said.
“On the ground floor there will be universal, or age-friendly, design where they have things like slightly wider corridors and wet rooms as bathrooms in case someone is a wheelchair used.
“We’re proposing 4 two-bed houses and 1 three-bed house on the end where we have a slightly larger garden. They’ll be two-story houses with a small area at the front and a garden at the rear.
“These houses will be advertised on the choice based lettings, so they’ll be open to everybody in the county. We would expect good interest from people in Ferrybank as well,” Mr. Vaughan said.
He explained that Kilkenny Council has also invested in improving the existing houses in the Ashgrove estate in recent years.
“On the retrofit works that Kilkenny County Council have done in Ashgrove between 2021 and ’23, there was huge retrofit works done on most of the houses in the estate and these improved the houses from a D1-D2 BER rating up to a B1-A3, which is quite a significant improvement,” Mr. Vaughan added.
Councillors welcomed the increased housing delivery for South Kilkenny, although Fianna Fáil’s Jenny Catt Slattery noted that Mullinavat remains an exception. Mr. Vaughan went on to outline the next step for the Slieverue development.
“A public information meeting in the Slieverue parish hall is scheduled for Wednesday November 12,” he said.
“This will coincide with a letter box drop of information to local houses. This project has Stage 1 funding approval, and if all goes to plan, is hoped to start in the third quarter of 2026, with a proposed end date of end of 2027 to early 2028.”
Fianna Fáil’s Ger Frisby, said: “It’s great to see the plans in front of us, it’s badly needed for Slieverue, the size that we are, to rejuvenate the likes of the national school and our Gaelic games, our soccer. I think it will bring new life into the village, it’s badly needed, and hopefully it will be buoyed by these 18 units coming on, and the families or individuals that are going into them, that will rejuvenate the local … as a Slieverue man I’m delighted”.
“All the projects that are happening around the place, Kilmacow, Mooncoin, it just shows that we are delivering on houses in Kilkenny as a Council, and I know the demand is there and we’re meeting that demand,” Cllr. Frisby added.
AARON KENT Funded by The Local Democracy Reporting Scheme
