Revealed: The Dublin city areas with the most derelict sites as councillor says persistent dilapidation leads to ‘gentrification by stealth’
According to the latest derelict sites register, operated by Dublin City Council (DCC), there are 132 decaying sites across the local authority area.
Examining the listings revealed a striking difference in the rate of dereliction across different Eircodes. Dublin 8 has the most derelict sites, at 36. This is double the number in the next highest area, Dublin 1, which has 18.
These account for 41pc of all derelict sites in the local authority area.
One row of eight derelict buildings in Dublin 8 – from 43 to 50 Dolphin’s Barn Street – is classed as eight separate entries on the register, which inflates that area’s figures.
Several other areas have similar rows of buildings with separate entries for each.
Dublin 10, which includes Ballyfermot, has no derelict sites and the DCC parts of Dublin 17, which include Coolock, Darndale and Belcamp, are dereliction-free too, according to the register.
Sinn Féin councillor Ciarán Ó Meachair, who represents the south-west inner city, including Dublin 8, said persistent dereliction was closely linked with the area’s gentrification.
“It’s tied in to the hollowing out of communities, as well,” he said. “And I suppose, communities not feeling like they have any ownership of the areas they have lived in for many decades.”
Mr Ó Meachair said the process by which sites were allowed to slide into dereliction amounted to “gentrification by stealth”.
“Buildings are allowed to fall into decay, so then developers can come along and say, ‘Oh well, isn’t this terrible, look there’s nothing you can do with these buildings any more. I’ll put the money in and we’ll have a nice hotel for the area, or a student accommodation block, or whatever it may be’,” he said.
“There’s a lot of that in Dublin 8 and I suppose The Liberties is where it’s most pronounced.”
He said it was much harder to say no to a building’s redevelopment when it had been allowed to fall into dilapidation.
How Dublin City Council became the capital’s biggest hoarder of derelict sites
“If they had actually just protected the structure in the first place, they wouldn’t have needed to be demolished in the first place,” he said.
Mr Ó Meachair believes the dereliction in Dublin 8 is indicative of a broader neglect of the area by authorities.
Pointing to the recent decision by the Department of Housing to row back on regeneration plans for Oliver Bond House, he said the community was feeling “cast aside”.
Darragh Moriarty, the local Labour Party councillor, said DCC should consider the use of compulsory sale orders, where owners are compelled to sell to another party who will develop the site within a strict timeframe.
He also wants the council to be more active with compulsory purchase orders (CPOs), whereby the authority buys the site for development themselves.
“I think we carry CPOs around like a big stick that we never want to use, or never actually use often enough,” he said.
DCC has paused the compulsory purchasing of derelict properties, pointing to resource and funding constraints, a move that many councillors want reversed.
Mr Moriarty acknowledged that councils have not always addressed dereliction with the urgency required, but he said recent comments from Tánaiste Simon Harris placing the blame squarely on local authorities rankled him.
“I just feel the brass neck of people who have been in power for a decade-and-a-half and people who have sat around the cabinet table for the last decade,” he said.
Mr Moriarty said Mr Harris should not be “finger-wagging” at local authorities on dereliction, bearing in mind that Fine Gael has been in government and “controlling the purse strings” for more than 15 years.
Green Party councillor Michael Pidgeon said there may have traditionally been a level of “tolerance” of dereliction in Dublin 8.
“It’s almost like if someone dumps or litters on a street and the street looks dirty, people are more likely to further litter or dump on it,” he said.
“And I think that kind of analogy works here, where things were a bit tolerated.”
For a long time, he felt the area had been “looked down upon a bit, whether out of snobbishness or market value,” but saw a shift in the wake of the Oliver Bond controversy in recent weeks.
“There was a very big public outcry over that. Hopefully, that might be the start of a change in attitudes there and people realising that this is not a part of the city that can just be left off or ignored,” Mr Pidgeon said.
Almost all representatives agree that the official register, while offering a rough sketch of dereliction in the capital, does not show the full picture.
DCC is hoping to address this by increasing staff numbers, having doubled its derelict sites team to six in recent months.
Four more staff are due to be hired by the end of the year.