Modular homes have been set out as a priority project by Limerick Mayor John Moran under his first mayoral budget of €10 million.

The fund is a new initiative brought in with Mr Moran’s election in June 2024 in which he has over €10m to spend up to the end of this year.

He told The Anton Savage Show that the budget is “actually only about 1% of what’s spent in Limerick” by the City Council.

“Compared to the national budget, it’s just a drop in the ocean,” he said.

Mr Moran said he is currently looking at modular homes as a way to help relieve the housing crisis on a local level in Limerick.

“These homes are homes with 40, 50-year life, and the idea is that they’re relocatable,” he said.

“So, we can put them on a neighbourhood that we want to build out in Colbert, for example, right in the city centre of Limerick,” he said.

“When they’ve served their purpose there and people have moved into permanent housing, we can dismantle them, move them across to Moyross, move them over to South Hill, the next neighbourhoods that we’re building.”

Skender's new finished module sample in their Chicago plant, which will start manufacturing modular homes, May 22, 2019. Credit: Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune/TNS/Alamy Live News

According to Mr Moran, there have been 17 sites across Limerick identified as potential spots for these builds.

He said these sites could accommodate about 2,000 of these modular homes, and rejected the idea that they would lead to sub-standard living conditions.

“There are many, many people that come to a place like Limerick for two or three years, or maybe five years – they've no intention of staying there for the rest of their life,” he said.

“They’re into work in an FDI company, they’re into teaching the university, they may even be a student that’s doing a postgrad, right?

“What we have to do is give them an accommodation that is in the right location, that has the right amenities around it, is in the right location and all the amenities are where we want to put the permanent houses as well.”

Mr Moran said he had no problem with a “centrally delivered solution” to the housing crisis, but that each location is different and local remedies should also be investigated.

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Main image: Modular Spacebox student housing at Utrecht University in Netherlands. Image: Iain Masterton / Alamy. 18 March 2010