This article is from page 16 of the 2008-07-08 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
CLARE County Council may be fac- ing the prospect of jobs cuts and cut- back in services due to the slowdown in the local economy.
That’s the view of Clare Green Party councillor Brian Meaney who was speaking yesterday after figures from the Department of the Environ- ment confirm a continuing downturn in the Clare construction sector.
“The slowdown in housing will have an exponential impact on coun- cil finances and with a significant de- crease in applications, there could be rationalisation of council services,” he said.
Cllr Meaney pointed out that there was a Significant deficit in the De- partment of the Environment budget at present and he speculated this would have a major impact on coun- cil finances.
‘The situation is going to get a lot worse before it gets better,” he said.
The Department of the Environ- ment housing figures confirm yester- day that new house registrations for the first five months has dropped by 83 per cent on the corresponding pe- riod in 2007.
In figures published by the Depart- ment of the Environment yesterday, they show that there was only 10 new house registrations for the month of
May and this compares to 129 new house registrations for the same month in Clare last year.
The new house registrations for the first five months of 2008 show that 89 new homes have been registered in Clare and this compares to 527 new house registrations for the cor- responding period last year, a drop of 83 per cent.
Separate figures in relation to house completions also confirm a downturn
in the local housing sector.
According to Department of the Environment figures, the number of new house completions for the month of May in 2007 has dropped from 188 to 99 for May of this year, a drop of 47 per cent.
The figures for the first five months of this year show that the number of house completions had dropped by 36 per cent going down from 748 to 474 house completions.