By Anne Lucey

Up to a dozen State-owned residential properties in and around Killarney National Park, Co Kerry, will not be available for social housing purposes, the Department of Arts, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht has confirmed.

The department has also ruled out the likely use for social housing of dozens of other state-owned properties at locations around the country in what were old estates.

Several cottages which had been used, until recently by park outdoor workers and administration staff in the Kerry town remain vacant due to retirements and deaths, as well as staff cutbacks and a halt to seasonal programmes run by the conservation agency, Groundwork.

Most of the houses and cottages, some of which are outside the main national park area on main roads, have been vacated within the past decade but remain in good condition.

While two or three of the houses have been put to use as temporary residences for artist-in-residence programmes, others are used intermittently if at all.

The Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht which owns the houses said none of its many estate cottages around the country will be available for anything other than purposes attached to its own needs.

A huge property portfolio of tens of thousands of hectares of recreational land around the country, managed by the NPWS, will also be off limits for use as housing to the new land development agency, the department has said.

The land, it said, is for use as nature reserves or heritage parks or protected areas, all of which are classed as “recreational”. Six national parks alone comprise almost 70,000 hectares.

However, the entire portfolio is also off-limits to the newly appointed Land Development agency, the department asserted.

The land agency has been empowered to co-ordinate State lands for regeneration and development, opening up sites which are not being used effectively for housing delivery.

The portfolio managed by the NPWS amounts to 87,000 hectares. Many of the sites were formerly old large estates, said the department said.

Accordingly, they contain a number of historic cottages and outbuildings in various states of repair which formed part of the estates’ curtilage,” it said. “Development of such properties is constrained given their location within areas designated as National Parks, Nature Reserves, Special Area of Conservation and Special Protection Areas.

Where feasible, such properties are used to provide staff or visitor facilities in congruence with the department’s statutory conservation remit, a statement said.