People who "desperately" need housing supports waiting four months - Barry

Cllr Brendan Barry said he was disappointed that it's “taking up to 16 weeks for an application for housing support to be processed.”
Addressing this month's meeting of Ballinamore Municipal District, he continued that “almost four months is far too long for people applying for social housing support.”
He said that often individuals seek the support when they “have reached crisis point or something that happens unforeseen where they have to move out of a house or lose a job.”
Cllr Barry stressed that they “desperately need it and are in no position to be waiting four months.”
He  said that with vacancies in the Council's  housing section, he hoped that “additional staff could be put in there in housing to work through the backlog and reduce that time.”
The Sinn Fein councillor  was speaking after he asked for an update on the number of applications to get on the social housing list in Leitrim in the last 12 months and asked how it is comparable to previous years and the current wait time for Housing Supports / Housing List application decisions.
A report to the meeting by the Director of Services, Housing and Community, Corporate Services, Cultural and Emergency Services, said that the number of housing applications received for social housing support over the past 12 months up to September 2023 is 258.
“This is only slightly up on the previous 12 month figure of 254 up to September 2022.
“The number of housing support applications up to September 2021 was 230.
“The typical application assessment time is currently up to 16 weeks due to a short term resource issue however priority cases are being fast-tracked,” the reply concluded.