More than €37 million has been spent buying private homes to use for social housing in Galway over the last eight years.
Newly revealed figures in the Sunday Independent show that €15,254,327 has been spent in Galway city and €21,964,695 in Galway county buying existing homes for social housing between 2011 and 2018.
Galway city acquired 74 units at an average price of €206,140 while the county council acquired 145 units which had an average cost of €151,481.
Galway city council has committed to delivering an additional 1,100 social housing units by the end of 2021, less than half of which will be directly built.
The figures were compiled by Fianna Fáil through Freedom of Information requests show that €1.2 billion has been spent by local authorities on 7,200 private homes around Ireland.
According to Fianna Fáil local authorities accounted for 2 percent of all housing transactions in the period from January 2011 to February of this year.
Dublin city lead the pack spending €218 million buying private homes, followed by Fingal (€134m), ad Kildare (€133m).
The lowest price tag came in Leitrim, where €5 million was spent to acquire 55 homes at an average cost of €91,000.
In 2018 just 4,251 new social housing units were built. The vast majority of the 27,103 unit output came through the HAP scheme, with 2,610 private homes purchased by councils.
