(Seo alt ónár bhfoireann Gaeltachta. Is féidir an bunleagan as Gaeilge a léamh anseo)

FOUR HOUSES ARE currently being built in Baile an Fheirtéirigh, which shows one way in which Údarás na Gaeltachta, in collaboration with a local cooperative, are tackling the housing crisis in the Gaeltacht.

And during his first visit to any Gaeltacht area in the south, Dara Calleary, Minister for Community and Rural Development, and the Gaeltacht, got a glimpse of the construction site by Comharchumann Forbartha Chorca Dhuibhne in Ballyferriter.

While there are only four houses in this scheme, they will be available to Irish speakers from the area as family homes but, in addition, their function will be to provide space in these five-bedroom houses for accommodation for twelve students who will attend the Summer College that the Comharchumann runs in Baile an Fheirtéirigh each year.

“Depending on the families in them, these houses will be able to accommodate up to 64 in total at a time,” said Páidí Ó Sé, the Comharchumann manager. That’s a maximum of 16 students in each house.

He said that ten applications had been received for the four houses and that they would be considered by a committee in the coming weeks and that the houses would be ready to move into in the Autumn.

The co-operative received a grant of €274,500 from the Authority to build these houses. The agency has no power over housing but acts as a funder and supporter of the Gaeltacht co-operatives and the Summer Colleges are part of their business.

This was a good day for Minister Calleary who has been under constant pressure over the issue of housing in the Gaeltacht and it was clear that he was very pleased with the progress of this project. This, after all,  was evidence that work was underway by his Department and by Údarás na Gaeltachta.

“It will take time,” he said while speaking to The Journal at the Cúirt Bhréanainn/Brandon Court construction site in Baile an Fheirtéirigh today.

“There’s a win for everyone here – there’s a win for the families who will be living there, there will be spaces for teenagers who are attending the Summer Colleges and there’s a win for the community, the houses are being built in the centre of the village and that will add to the life of the place.”

Four houses don’t go far to alleviate the Gaeltacht housing crisis when compared to the 300-400 houses needed annually to make a difference, as Donncha Ó hÉallaithe explained in an information session at Leinster House on Tuesday, but it is a start and, it must be remembered, this has been achieved without the Údarás having housing powers.

Minister Calleary has said that the Údarás will have a housing role, described as a secondary one, in legislation due to be passed in the Oireachtas before the Summer. That is the Údarás na Gaeltachta Bill 2024 which is due to be passed to bring back elections to elect members to the organisation’s board but is currently being amended to include this function within the agency’s remit.

While on site, the Minister launched a housing survey that the Údarás will be running between now and the middle of next month, seeking to obtain accurate data on the demand for housing in the Gaeltacht.

The Údarás chief executive, Tomás Ó Síocháin, was delighted that this survey was being launched.  In its end of year report for 2025, there was a reference to approximately 200 vacancies which were unfilled at the end of last year.  One of the reasons for this was lack of sufficient housing in the Gaeltacht regions where the jobs were located.

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“The biggest question for the County Councils is where the demand is, how many houses are needed by how many people, where and that’s what this survey is about so that we can go back to the local councils and say a certain amount is needed here, a certain amount is needed there.”

The survey itself is open at this link and will need to be completed by respondents and returned before 17 April.

Údarás na Gaeltachta intends to share this information with County Councils and other organisations supporting the provision of housing in the Gaeltacht.

The Minister and his colleagues had a busy day travelling around the Gaeltacht community on the Dingle peninsula on Thursday. He announced 23 new jobs at high-tech company Net Feasa in Dingle this morning, opened a community centre in the town later, before heading to Páirc an Aghasaigh, the headquarters of Dingle/Daingean Uí Chúis GAA, the club which won the All-Ireland Senior Championship in Croke Park in January, where he turned the sod on a new all-weather pitch project.

After lunch, he opened a play park in Dún Chaoin and then travelled on to the construction site in Baile an Fheirtéirigh. After some photos, a cup of tea and a bun, conversations with the workers and executives and committee members of Comharchumann Forbartha Chorca Dhuibhne, whom he highly praised for initiating the construction project, he was on the road again to south Kerry to officially open a digital and business hub, a G-teic is the term the Údarás have coined to describe them, in the South Kerry (Uíbh Ráthach) Gaeltacht.

The Journal’s Gaeltacht initiative is supported by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme

This article was originally written in the reporter’s native Irish and has been translated to English here. AI was used as part of the translation process before final edits.