Galway people on the waiting list for public housing has reached a new high - or low - point.

The local authority's housing waiting list in Galway City has topped 3,000 for the first time and almost 500 more applicants in need of housing are waiting to be assessed to see if they can get on that list.

But efforts to clear the backlog of people waiting to be housed have been severely hampered by a lack of funding - Galway City Council will build just six new social houses between now and December 2011.

The City Council's new Housing Progress Report, which outlines the full extent of the city’s housing crisis, shows that the local authority has abandoned plans it had to develop 349 homes for the disadvantaged because it hasn’t the money.

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It has suspended plans to build six estates that would have contained a mix of affordable, social and voluntary houses.

The Council has suspended plans to build 72 units on a site on the Headford Road; 43 units on Bóthar na Chóiste; 163 units at Ballyburke; and 69 units on the Ballymoneen Road.

Plans to build an unspecified amount of units at two other sites, one on the Ballymoneen Road and another in Ballinfoile Park, have also been suspended.

There are now 3,024 people waiting for a home, up by 117 in the months April, May and June of 2011.

Meanwhile, as house building grinds to a halt, essential bridgework is to proceed - with traffic disruption on two critical city arteries.

A stop-go traffic lights system will operate on the Wolfe Tone Bridge this week and next to allow for essential maintenance work to be carried out on the structure; while a one-way traffic system will be in operation on the eastern section of the Seamus Quirke Road.

Work on the Wolfe Tone Bridge, which involves the use of a specialist bridge access machine, has to be based on low tide times which unfortunately for next week will generally coincide with the early morning peak traffic times.

The bridge maintenance works will be carried out each day, three hours either side of low tide.

(BMcC/KMcA)