Over 60 family homes at the Curragh military camp are unoccupied due to "vacancy or dereliction", according to an Independent TD.

A short distance away from the Defence Forces Training College (DFTC) in Co Kildare, there are 62 unoccupied family homes.

There are currently "about 10" occupied homes at the camp, and 12 homes are "close to occupancy", but the majority of residencies have broken windows and trees growing from the brickwork.

At the Curragh this afternoon, Tánaiste and Minister for Defence Micheál Martin announced there would be €55 million in funding for the improvement of Defence Forces' infrastructure.

None of the €55 million will go toward accommodation projects in the Curragh.

On The Pat Kenny Show, Independent TD Cathal Berry said the houses are  "in various states of repair and disrepair" due to underfunding.

"Our armed forces have been underfunded for decades ... Ireland spends about 1/3 of the EU average on defence and this is one of the symptoms of that," he said.

"Secondly, the Department of Defence who manage the Defence estate directly, their view is that the Defence Forces and the Defence estate, they're not in the accommodation business."

Housing

Deputy Berry said he hopes to look into "reoccupying and re-accommodating military families" into the military properties to "alleviate the national housing crisis".

"It's expensive to rent defence accommodation – there are about 10 houses that are occupied in the current camp by military families," he said.

"They pay rent directly to the Department of Defence. So, it's actually an investment rather than an expense if money was pumped in."

Deputy Berry said there were over 6,500 households on the Kildare County Council's social housing list.

"The least we should be doing from the defence perspective is helping out our local authorities, and taking military families off that list and accommodating them on military property," he said.

Criteria

In order to create a "pecking order" for housing, Deputy Berry said military personnel would use the same criteria as social housing.

"The military commanders would be well up to speed in relation to who and which military families are in desperate need," he said.

"There are about 134 family homes across the country from a defence family point of view, and, unfortunately, only about a third of those houses are occupied.

"While we do accommodate some military families, there's much greater scope to triple that number and take pressure off local authority housing."

Modular housing

As there is no planning permission required to build on military property, Deputy Berry suggested modular housing would be built alongside the homes in the Curragh.

"Some houses require a small bit of renovation, others would require a deep retrofit," he said. "On average, it's about €70,000 per house – coincidentally, that's precisely the amount of money that the Government are giving to private owners of derelict houses around the country to do them up."

"Almost every building in the Curragh camp is actually in State ownership, and I think the State should be leading by example in this regard."

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