How Dublin City Council became the capital’s biggest hoarder of derelict sites
Dereliction is a particularly hot topic in Dublin at the moment, as its corrosive effects come to bear in a city plagued by a deepening housing crisis.
But an Irish Independent analysis has revealed that the body charged with tackling this dereliction, Dublin City Council, has been the biggest sponsor of urban decay in the city for years, due to systemic inertia and a lack of resources to tackle the issue.
The analysis revealed that, out of 141 sites, 14 on Dublin city’s derelict sites register have languished on the list for at least a decade: nearly 10pc of the total.
Out of those, eight are owned by Dublin City Council (DCC), including three of the five oldest.
When the Irish Independent visited the eight sites, none appeared to have had substantial works done to bring them back into use since the council’s purchase.
Instead, they were boarded up and remained in a state of disrepair.
This is despite all of them having been in the hands of the authority for at least three years, and longer in some cases.
One site has sat on the register for more than 18 years and spent the last seven-and-a-half in council ownership.
The site, 144 Harold’s Cross Road in Dublin 6W, has been on the derelict sites list since June 2007 and in council ownership since April 2018.
DCC said the building had been demolished last year and the neighbouring buildings, which are structurally unsound and privately owned, would probably need to be knocked before it could be redeveloped.
The second-oldest site, 6 Terrace Place in Dublin 1, has been on the register since October 2008 and was the subject of a compulsory purchase order by the council in April 2022.
Remedial works to bring the building into a usable state have not been carried out since it was bought more than three years ago.
144 Harold's Cross Road (behind the green shipping container) is sandwiched between a private development and structurally unsound homes
In total, 27 sites on the register are owned by DCC, just under 20pc of the full list.
A spokesperson for DCC said the redevelopment of its sites was being taken on a case-by-case basis, with relevant criteria including the number of housing units that can be delivered and value for money.
“In light of this, each site is assessed and prioritised accordingly to ensure maximum number of homes can be delivered in the most efficient manner while maximising value for money and relative to other sites,” they said.
Derelict sites end up in council ownership when buildings on the register are compulsorily purchased, usually after repeated failed attempts to compel their owners to apply remedial works.
We’ve inadvertently become the biggest landlord of vacancy and dereliction in the city
In theory, this allows the authority to apply those works and bring the building back to a usable state, but in practice, the exercise crawls along at a glacial pace, if at all.
“It goes back to funding and resources,” said Social Democrats councillor for Dublin’s South East Inner City, Cian Farrell.
“Once we compulsorily acquire these properties, do we actually have the funding to be able to redevelop into housing or community use? That was always a grey area, a question mark.
“But, now, we have inadvertently become the biggest landlord of vacancy and dereliction in the city.”
Mr Farrell, who recently chaired a council working group on the regeneration of Dublin, said it took the kind of design and engineering resources to tackle a derelict building as it might to develop a several-hundred-unit housing scheme.
“I think that was the main blocker,” he said, adding that staff numbers was another major constraint.
The old Rialto cinema building is the most valuable on the register, worth €3.5m
“Limerick [City and County Council] I think have 11 or 12 full-time dedicated dereliction staff. We have three for a city that is four or five times the size of Limerick.”
Dublin’s Lord Mayor, Ray McAdam, who has made regeneration a focus of his tenure, said there was an ingrained culture of acceptance in the council towards dereliction, but it had gradually been changing.
“If I’m honest with you, I think dereliction has been tolerated as an unfortunate reality, rather than being treated as I would describe and have always viewed it: as a social crime,” he said.
Meanwhile, there is an ever-growing pile of cash owed to the council in unpaid derelict sites levies. These are fines applied to owners of derelict sites at a rate of 7pc of its value annually.
The combined value of unpaid fines has nearly trebled since 2020, topping €10m in June. But councillors say convoluted legal processes makes it uneconomical to chase owners up.
Five derelict sites are worth over €1m, with the priciest on the list hitting a cool €3.5m
“[The legal advice was that] the cost of pursuing the levy wasn’t worth it in the end,” Mr Farrell said. “That’s where the lack of movement comes from.”
The levy is now applied as a charge on the land, so when it is bought by the next owner, the owed debt must be cleared before the transaction can conclude.
However, relying on this mechanism means the issue is usually put on the long finger, leading to ever-accruing debts in the meantime.
DCC said a review of pursuing levies through debt collection was ongoing.
To calculate those levies, the council values sites added to the register. The current average value of the 113 assessed sites comes in at just under €360,000. Five are worth over €1m, with the priciest on the list hitting €3.5m.
That site, 355-361 South Circular Road in Dublin 8, previously the Rialto cinema, was mooted as a 317-bed student accommodation block by its owners, Molaga Capital, in 2019, but the imposing building has continued to crumble, untouched since then.
It has been on the city’s derelict sites register since January 2021.
The 1.3-acre Cody's Yard site has sat unused in a prime city centre location for decades.
The 1.3-acre Cody’s Yard on the North Strand, surrounded by fencing and CCTV, is another derelict site worth a pretty penny. It is valued at €3m. Owned by investment fund E to Infinity ICAV, it was added to the register in November last year.
Many foundational issues with DCC’s dereliction strategy are addressed in a comprehensive report produced by Mr Farrell’s working group in recent weeks.
The report’s proposals, which were approved by Dublin councillors, put forward a radical overhaul of the city’s mechanisms to tackle dereliction, with a key focus on addressing what effectively amounts to the council hoarding derelict properties.
A new “waterfall” framework to deal with the council’s derelict sites is proposed as part of it.
Under the framework, shortly after a compulsory purchase, the authority will assess whether it has the funds and staffing required to convert the building into a usable property, preferably housing.
At the end of the day, it’s better that they’re in use than not
If the council cannot resource this, the property will be sold to the Land Development Agency, an approved housing body or a private developer, with covenants attached that it be rejuvenated within a specified timeframe.
“That’s the process that those buildings we own are all going to go through now, over the coming 12 to 18 months,” said Mr Farrell.
“We’re going to see if we can move them on because, at the end of the day, it’s better that they’re in use than not.”
Modelled after Limerick’s success in tackling dereliction, the report also proposes a major scaling-up of the derelict sites unit, which it said should aim for 500 sites on its register by 2028.
But all of these actions and overhauls require two things that have been sorely lacking when it comes to dereliction: funding and political commitment.
For its part, the Government has promised to replace the largely ineffective sites levy with a new Derelict Sites Tax, to be administered by Revenue instead of local authorities, but details are thin as of now.
The measures will not be in place until at least 2027, but Housing Minister James Browne said they were a clear sign that the Government was now “declaring war” on derelict sites.