This article is from page 10 of the 2011-10-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 10 JPG
CLARE County Council are poised to make the final grant allocation to Rural Resettlement Ireland for four once-off houses in west Clare that were inspired by a local community’s desire to save its local school from closure.
The four houses are being built by the Kilbaha-based national organisation in Tullycrine and Knockaderry on the back of funding from the Department of the Environment to the tune of € 400,000 and now a supplementary grant of over € 50,000 from Clare County Council.
“It’s a grant of € 56,670,” Clare County Council staff officer Deirdre O’Keeffe told The Clare People. “Kilrush area councillors have given approval but it now has to go before the monthly meeting of Clare County Council this October.
“The way it works is that there will be final budget costs submitted by the quantity surveyor for the houses. Rural Resettlement Ireland have reached the fund they are looking for and we have to go back to the Department of Environment to sanction that approval. We did that a while back and now we have to go before the council to get the councillors approval for that,” Ms O’Keeffe added.
The four houses are six years in planning, being part of an RRI plan to build 11 houses in depopulated parts of west Clare that were lodged with Clare County Council.
At the time RRI chief Jim Connolly revealed that plans for the four houses in Tullycrine and Knockaderry were lodged in direct response to a call from the chairman of Tullycrine national school board of management.
“We are working alongside schools by bringing in families to ensure that the schools’ future is secure,” Mr Connolly said.
Mary Lynch, one of two teachers at Tullycrine national school, said that the four new families moving into the area would mean the difference between Tullycrine being a one or a two-teacher school. “We currently have 12 pupils at the school and that is just enough to justify two teachers. But if four new families move into the area, that will help secure the future of the school.”
The house-building project was stalled for a number of years, before Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Michael Finneran in response to a parliamentary from Clare Fine Gael TD, Pat Breen, revealed in 2010 that “the project being advanced by Rural Resettlement Ireland at Tullycrine and Knockadereen” was included in his department’s € 157m budget for voluntary and social housing.
“Clare County Council will advise the housing body with regard to the procedures for drawing down the funding in accordance with the terms and conditions of the relevant schemes,” he added.