Tipperary County Council moves to buy 24 derelict homes
Tipperary County Council has begun the process of compulsorily purchasing 24 vacant houses in the Glen Court estate in Emly in a bid to bring the long-derelict properties back into use.
The estate, located outside Tipperary town, has been blighted by vacancy for years, with boarded-up homes and damaged roofs, while more than 200 people remain on the social housing waiting list in the Tipperary-Cahir-Cashel Municipal District.
The houses were built during the Celtic Tiger, but after the financial crash in 2008, the developer ran into difficulties, and the estate was never fully finished.
The 24 houses that Tipperary County Council are proposing to CPO have been on the council’s derelict sites register since 2025, but they have been lying vacant for many years before this.
Sinn Féin councillor for Tipperary town Annemarie Ryan welcomed the official start of the process and said that her and her council colleagues had been engaging with residents in the estate for a number of years.
Some of the houses in Glen Court, Emly. © Cllr Annemarie Ryan.
“I’m very happy to have worked with the district, the council’s environment section, the Town Regeneration Team, the Glen Court residents and my colleague councillor Mary Hannah Hourigan, in order to get the CPO process underway,” she said.
“I was elected first in 2019, I started my work on dereliction and vacancy then. It’s taken this long to get to this stage, so I completely understand people’s frustration in the process,” the Sinn Féin councillor added.
Cllr Ryan said that while positive work has been done by the Government and county councils, there was more work that needed to be done to address the issues of vacancy and dereliction around the county.
“More funding from central government is needed, we’re too big a county for one regeneration team,” she said.
“[We need] stronger more enforceable legislation to penalise those who allow properties to deteriorate and leaving them vacant, higher penalties for long term vacancy and dereliction... and target setting in each local authority to address vacancy and dereliction in town and village centres,” the Sinn Féin councillor added.
Anyone with a legal interest in the properties in Glen Court can have their say on the CPO plans in writing by sending a letter to Shane Grogan, the executive officer at the Town Regeneration office in Tipperary County Council’s Nenagh office.