Housing

Local anger over affordable housing body buying entire estate

Respond bought all 69 houses estate in Cork suburb for social housing, but residents’ association says action is ‘locking out’ individual buyers

Darragh O’Brien, the Minister for Housing: visited the site at Sarsfield Heights estate which is now at the centre of a controversy over its acquisition by an affordable housing body. Picture: Getty

A residents’ association has complained that an affordable housing body is “locking out” individual private home buyers by buying an entire housing estate.

Respond, a housing association, received state funding to purchase all 69 homes in the Sarsfield Heights estate, which is currently under construction in the Cork city suburb of Wilton, for social housing.

Darragh O’Brien, the Minister for Housing, has visited the site, which has been hailed as an example of the publicly ...