Lack of social housing in rural Donegal ‘pushing’ people out of communities

There have been no council houses built in some rural Donegal towns and villages in the last 20 years, it has been claimed.

The lack of social housing delivery is having an impact in small, rural villages, as national schools are being forced to close in these areas due to dwindling numbers.

Doaghbeg NS, Portsalon, finally shut its doors last month after 174 years, with only seven enrolled pupils in the 2024-25 academic year. The school is one of eight nationwide closed by the Department of Education following agreement with their patron body, which in all cases was the Catholic Church.

Figures presented to a special meeting of Donegal County Council on Monday show that a total of 511 social housing units are being built across the county in 23 separate projects.

The housing units are being built in towns and villages including Bundoran, Dungloe, Letterkenny, Raphoe, Kilcar, Ballyliffin, Carndonagh, Gleneely, Convoy, Donegal Town, Ballybofey, Letterkenny, Gweedore and Castlefinn. However, the omission of some villages caused consternation among councillors.

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Bundoran-based Cllr Michael McMahon expressed his concerns that no council houses have been built in Ballyshannon for over 20 years.

“I’m very upset and very worried about the housing situation in Ballyshannon,” he said. “I would ask the top table there to get a solution to that as soon as possible and I would be putting a timeline on the next meeting that we would have a solution sorted out.

“I certainly don’t want to be losing any houses in Ballyshannon, and we’ve had no houses built in Ballyshannon in 20 years.”

The council also heard from Cllr Martin Scanlon of Lifford-Stranorlar MD of the negative effect on residents from overlooked communities.

“Out of 511 houses that have been announced, none of them are in any small towns or villages,” he said. “They all seem to be in built-up towns. We have to start putting them into smaller places to support the shops, the doctors, the schools which is very important.

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“Just last week at our Coiste na Gaeilge meeting, we were told about two national schools that have 24 pupils between them, one in Doochary and one in Edeninfagh. That’s the areas we want to be hitting if we want rural Ireland to survive.

“I’ll take my own area, Cloghan. If you look at the housing list now, there’s nobody looking for a house in Cloghan. When I would speak to people I would ask why they didn’t put Cloghan down. The response is that it’s been 23 years since the council built any social housing in Cloghan.

“When are there going to be houses built in it? That’s why they put down Ballybofey, Convoy because that’s where the houses are being built.

“Build them and they will come - that was a famous saying. We need to be looking at our rural areas to try and support them.”

Letterkenny-based Cllr Michael McBride said: “There are villages that we can see here today that are getting houses but there are also a lot of small villages that are not being developed and there’s no plans for them.

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“I think we need to sit down and go through every village in our municipal areas and look at them and say: ‘what’s happening to the schools? Can we support them by putting housing in these areas?’

“It’s very important if you look at last weekend’s papers, there’s a national school closed down in Donegal, and I think that’s just going to continue right across the board, there’s no doubt in my mind about it. It’s looking like we cannot have a development plan that’s just going to keep pushing people to live in built-up areas because rural Ireland must be supported.

“Our development plan has to be designed so that it will support keeping rural schools open and they also become feeder schools into places like Milford schools and other secondary schools.”

John Gallagher, senior engineer with the council’s housing section, told the meeting that 759 units are either complete or on site, meaning contracts have been signed for the developments and they are at various stages of construction. There are also six turnkey projects that have full planning approval for a total of 216 units. Overall, he said there are more than 1,100 housing units either complete or in the pipeline.