Unoccupied €300,000 Leixlip council house will have new tenant "by end of year"

Kildare County Council has confirmed that a vacant three-bed bungalow in Leixlip, which it reportedly bought for €300,000 in July 2016, will be occupied by the end of this year.

A report in Monday’s Irish Independent said that the furnished house, located near Main Street, had yet to be occupied by local authority tenants.

In a response to a query from the Leinster Leader, a KCC spokesperson stated: “ Kildare County Council has engaged with an individual with particular personal requirements in an effort to ensure that they are accommodated in a manner more appropriate to their specific needs.

“Protracted legal discussions have taken place, and are now concluded.

“The Council anticipates that this matter will be resolved and the house occupied by year end.”

A report on work being done to vacant houses provided to the Celbridge-Leixlip area last week said that, of the Council’s 4,081 local authority houses, 1.2% were vacant in September.

There were four awaiting allocation to tenants. Another 31 required major refurbishment and 15 needed minor works.

Seventeen had been completed since July in the various Municipal Districts: in Athy (3), Celbridge 92), Kildare (2), Maynooth (1) and Naas (9). Twenty more houses had come on stream since the July report, including in Athy (5), Kildare (6), Maynooth (6) and Naas (3).

Two houses in the Celbridge-Leixlip required major work, one each in Leixlip and Celbridge and three needed minor work, two in Leixlip and one in Celbridge.