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RTÉ News
29-06-2025
- Politics
- RTÉ News
Move to halt project to build social homes 'a setback', says minister
The Government has been forced to defend the decision to stop a public-private partnership project that would have built thousands of new homes in Dublin city and surrounding counties. Speaking on RTÉ's The Week in Politics, Minister of State Christopher O'Sullivan said the decision was "a setback in terms of the number of homes that would have been delivered" but the Government also had to be responsible with taxpayers' money. The delivery of almost 3,000 social homes across the country, 2,000 of which are in Dublin City was delayed after the minister for housing pulled the plug on funding for a number of projects that were about to begin construction because of value for money concerns. The Construction Industry Federation yesterday said the move could threaten the public private partnership model and have implications for projects such as Metro North. Three weeks ago the Department of Housing decided not to proceed with almost 500 social homes in Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare and Sligo that were due be delivered by a consortium under the public private partnership model due to value for moony concerns It's understood the cost of each of the units was more than €1 million and that figure had almost doubled compared to similar units that were delivered in 2020. "Yes we have an absolute duty of care to the people of Ireland to end homelessness," Mr O'Sullivan said, "but we also have a duty of care to the taxpayers and when we are talking about figures in excess of €1m per unit, there has to be a point where we shout stop and look for that value for money." Speaking on the same programme, Sinn Féin TD Claire Kerrane said there is a need now to go back to local authorities for housing delivery. "We need to go back to the local authorities. Obviously we do, when are we going to start doing it? We're 14 or 15 years now in to the housing crisis. She said housing needs to be declared an emergency. "It hasn't been declared an emergency so we don't have the emergency powers," she said, adding that builders cannot get credit, and local authorities are not building to the scale they should. "It is getting worse and what is making it worse again is the Government continuing to say the housing plan working. It isn't working," she added. On ending public-private partnerships, Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon said there is a duty to the taxpayer, but the taxpayer is paying anyway for emergency accommodation that is affecting children negatively. "Those children living in in hotel accommodation, they are being paid for by the taxpayer and the impacts that is having on their lives, the lifelong consequences that will also be funded by the taxpayer." "The state has not declared this an emergency, we need to be zoning land that is affordable, to have the State getting back building in a massive, significant way. "We also need to understand the impact that these living conditions are having on children." He said local authorities need to be given emergency funds to get vacant homes up quickly, adding that an emergency response requires an emergency investment. Mr O'Sullivan agreed the Government is willing to give funds to local authorities to provide homes, and also said there is a need for a standardised design to cut costs in delivering homes to simplify things.
Irish Examiner
12-06-2025
- General
- Irish Examiner
Dozens of scale models at builder's €730k Cobh home show a lifelong love of construction
MINIATURES of just about every conceivable construction vehicle are on display at Glenveagh, the Cobh family home of a man who was as passionate about the building industry as kids are about Lego. 'We were not allowed to call them toys,' laughs Aisling Morgan, daughter of the late Kevin Dillon, who had a long involvement with the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) and was senior housing advisor for Munster for HomeBond, the structural defects insurance scheme. Scale models on display at the Cobh home of the late Kevin Dillon Kevin designed and built the family home at Ringacoltig in Rushbrooke in 1992, and he named it Glenveagh, in honour of the vast and dramatic national parkland of his home county of Donegal. His own father had worked in Glenveagh National Park and Kevin used to accompany him. 'It's where his love of building and old houses began,' Aisling says. Kevin and his wife Ann Mackey, a native of Kinsale and niece of the late Taoiseach Jack Lynch, reared their two children in Ringacoltig: Aisling, who now lives in France, and Hugh, a musician, who teaches in MTU Cork School of Music. Glenveagh is a fine, solid home, built to last by its knowledgeable owner, on a private site with a good orientation. It catches the morning sun out front and the best of the evening light to the west-facing rear. A sheltered patio, sandwiched between a rear sunroom and a formal dining room, is ideal for barbeques. When Kevin bought the site, there weren't many homes on the leafy laneway that forms part of the Rinn an Chabaltaigh/headland of the navy in Rushbrooke. Housing density is still low and all of the homes are detached and bespoke. Kevin built a four-bed, converting one bedroom to his study, where the windowsill is dotted with scale models of diggers, loaders, drum rollers and bulldozers and where the shelves are lined with various bibles of the building trade. The long and the short of it is, the man who built Glenveagh knew what he was doing. He even added an independent studio, accessed from the garden. It's been used in the past as a guest bedroom and could easily have an en suite fitted, as it's already plumbed. Alternatively, it could be a separate home office or used to run a business from home. The downstairs layout of the house was designed for family life, with the option to up the ante when entertaining. An open-plan kitchen dining room opens into the bright sunroom at one end of the hallway. At the other end, past a family room, is a a more formal reception room with double doors that open to a formal dining room. Entertaining was a feature of life at Glenveagh and having musical kids was a bonus. Kevin and Ann had lots of friends in the construction industry and they had a whip-around for Kevin when he retired, throwing a surprise party for him and gifting him a cruise. He got to go on the cruise, but didn't get to enjoy his retirement, after contracting a serious illness. He passed away in 2018. Ann passed away early this year and so their comfortable, inviting home is up for sale. Selling 175 sq m Glenveagh, with a guide price of €730,000, is Johanna Murphy of Johanna Murphy & Sons. She points out that it's on half an acre. 'You feel like you are in the country, yet you are less than a 10 minute walk into Cobh town,' Ms Murphy says. The house is close to Rushbrooke train station, for access to regular commuter trains into Cork City. Schools and sports clubs are nearby and Cork Harbour — and café Ellen's Kitchen — are on your doorstep. VERDICT: Robust family home on generous private site with granny flat/home office options.
Irish Examiner
22-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Expert tells conference what Cork Luas needs to deliver on time and within cost
Steady funding and an alignment of stakeholders are the two reasons why light rail Luas tram systems can be delivered at a quicker pace in other European countries. As the public consultation process continues on the specific route for a Luas system for Cork, the Construction Industry Federation's Southern Construct event heard a panel discussion on public transport developments in Cork. Paolo Carbone, Head of Public Transport Capital Programmes, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, who worked on tram systems in other countries, including Italy, Hungary and Austria, said the Dublin Luas was evidence that the economic benefit was far greater than the construction and maintenance costs. "I was here when the headlines in the papers were about cost overruns, about the delays," he said. "But it has enabled housing, it has enabled sustainable growth. Light rail provides connectivity that allows further development by the public and private sectors." In relation to Cork, he said it was important now to take time and "plan it right". Last month, the emerging preferred route for an 18km light rail connection between Ballincollig and Mahon was published. A series of public consultation meetings have been held and submissions from the public are being accepted before a decision is made on the recommended route. Much focus is on the length of time it will take to deliver the project in Cork and the cost. Mr Carbone said: "People often ask what is the difference between delivering in Ireland and delivering in other countries and why Madrid can deliver at a fraction of the cost. There are two reasons. The first is alignment among stakeholders. In those countries, during the delivery there is never a stoppage or a delay. The second is steady funding." He repeated that the Luas system has been a high success pointing to the 54 million passengers carried last year compared to the more than 42 million carried on the Manchester Metrolink, the closest light rail system geographically to Dublin. Read More Watch: Cork Luas light rail system unveiled
Irish Times
18-05-2025
- General
- Irish Times
I have an almost gluttonous appetite for irony, but this is too rich even for my tastes
Last Monday, at about 8am, part of a terrace of Victorian cottages along the Grand Canal in Dublin 6 – properties which have been listed on Dublin City Council's Derelict Sites Register for just under two years, but which had for decades previously been falling into dilapidation – collapsed into the street. It was a warm and sunny morning, and many Dubliners were making their way along that stretch of Canal Road; according to a report in this paper , an eyewitnesses said the falling masonry very narrowly missed a cyclist and a pedestrian walking their dog. It was, it seems fair to say, sheer dumb luck that nobody was killed or seriously injured. Photographs of the property, taken in the immediate aftermath of its collapse, are startling. Almost the entire front of the house has simply fallen into the street, the narrow footpath strewn with rubble and splintered wood. The roof, the whole terrace of which had been entirely covered with plants, has caved in. The building, over many years of total neglect, had simply rotted away and died. Who is responsible for this? In a direct sense, the owner of the building is responsible. And the owner of the building, it turns out, is the Construction Industry Federation , the representative body of the construction industry in Ireland. According to that Irish Times report, the facade of the rotting building had until very recently been concealed by 'a banner advertising a CIF construction safety campaign.' I will freely admit to having an almost gluttonous appetite for irony, but this is a little too rich even for my tastes. It's hard to see this incident as anything other than a lurid symptom of a disease that is eating away at Dublin from the inside. As beautiful as many parts of the city are, and as vibrant as it can be, Dublin's problem with dereliction has become something like a definitional one: there is no experience of the place that is not marred by the fact of its many empty and unpreserved buildings, falling into states of advanced putrefaction. READ MORE The front facade of an unoccupied cottage in Ranelagh has crumbled and fallen onto the street, obstructing a footpath. Video: Dara MacDonaill 'Good puzzle would be to cross Dublin without passing a pub,' Leopold Bloom famously reflected, in Ulysses, of his infamously bibulous hometown. An equally good puzzle, more than a century later, would be to cross Dublin without passing a derelict building. There's barely a street in the city centre that isn't marred by abandonment and dilapidation, by boarded up windows and grubby, peeling facades. [ Dublin's vacant buildings: 'It's my property, I'll do whatever I want with it' Opens in new window ] This is both an aesthetic and an ethical blight on the urban environment, encroaching incrementally and relentlessly on the experience of those living in the city. And it's a clear and insistent indication of poverty: a poverty that arises not out of a lack of money, but a lack of civic pride and responsibility, among both the property-speculating classes and the political establishment. In fact, it's a form of poverty that arises out of people having too much money. It's true, of course, that some buildings remain empty for long periods because their owners are very elderly and living in homes, or because they are languishing in complicated probate, or whatever it might be. But in many, many cases, such dereliction is a choice on the part of property owners who are wealthy enough to let a property sit vacant year after year, blighting and corrupting the urban environment, as the land it sits on steadily accrues value in the context of a housing crisis (or a seller's market, depending on which side of the threshold you're on.) It takes considerable wealth, that is, to make a city feel so impoverished. [ Land hoarders 'laughing' at local authorities as €20.5m owed in unpaid derelict site levies Opens in new window ] All this dereliction, all these residential neighbourhoods with boarded-up houses and shopping streets with dead and dormant retail units, is a result of a totally dysfunctional attitude toward property and property ownership. On the evidence of Dublin's sheer volume of empty buildings – more than 14,500 homes and commercial units vacant for over four years, according to data collected earlier this year by An Post – the State's view of the issue seems to be that, well, it's a shame, of course, but we can't prevent people doing whatever the hell they want with their own property. But this is deeply antisocial behaviour, of a scale and impact of which, typically, only powerful groups are capable. It's antisocial not just in the sense of the destruction of a shared environment (though it is certainly that), but in the sense that it reveals a deeper carelessness about, and disdain for, the experience of fellow citizens. (There are parts of Dublin, as Hugh Linehan forcefully put it in this paper last February, that feel 'like a city designed by people who despise its inhabitants.') [ Derelict Dublin: Too often, it feels like a place designed by people who despise its inhabitants Opens in new window ] For those who are suffering in various ways from this country's housing crisis – the growing number of homeless, the young (and no longer so young) who have lost all hope of owning their own homes, or of living anywhere close to where they work – these derelict properties amount to a profound insult, like watching someone throw out untouched food when you are convulsed by the pain of hunger. As Rory Hearne put it in Gaffs, his book about the housing crisis, this is a 'viscerally pernicious inequality. Those without access to homes can literally touch and see derelict buildings abandoned because the owners have an excess of wealth and property.' But let's say you don't care about that. Let's say, for the sake of argument, you don't care about people who are living on the streets or who can't afford a home. Let's say that you have somehow managed to exist in such a way that no one you know or particularly care about is detrimentally effected by this apparently very wealthy country's confounding inability to provide affordable housing for its citizens. Even then, you've still got to live in the place, haven't you? You've still got to look at the place. And it's dispiriting, day after day, to move through a city so badly disfigured by dereliction, where you're never quite sure whether a gigantic banner bearing a message about construction safety might hide a facade that is about to collapse on top of you, like a hazardously over-stacked metaphor. We should have more respect for our capital city, and for ourselves, than to tolerate this situation, and those who have created it.
Irish Times
17-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Property dereliction is antisocial behaviour perpetrated by the rich – it can no longer go unpunished
The dysfunctional state of Ireland's housing market was perfectly illustrated by the recent collapse of a derelict cottage on Dublin's Grand Canal . As hard as it might be to believe, this property is owned by the very people who are supposed to represent Ireland's builders. Last week it was revealed that in the middle of a housing crisis , when every property should be occupied, the owner of a small terrace of derelict cottages on a prime site in Ranelagh was none other than the Construction Industry Federation (CIF). Let that sink in for a minute. The organisation that has presided over this episode of urban decay, allowing dwellings to fall into ruin, is the lobby group whose members are supposed to be building the country. Only in Ireland. This represents policy dysfunction on a monumental scale, laid bare in a micro-aggression against society at large. You might think the term aggression is over the top, but it's not if you regard dereliction as an antisocial behaviour that spreads from one property to another and from one street to the next. We are used to hearing the 'antisocial behaviour' label to describe a gang of young lads in hoodies hanging around a street corner threatening passers-by. It is considered antisocial because it detracts from the sociability and cohesion of the area. READ MORE Dereliction is similarly antisocial but it is perpetrated by rich adults rather than poor youths. Allowing homes and buildings to degrade to such an extent gives permission to other landlords to abuse their property, typically hoarding in the hope of future gain. Dereliction begets dereliction. The more hoarding, the less property available in the city and the higher the overall price of property. The hoarder is quids-in. This must be stopped. Property ownership is more than mere financial asset management: the owners of property are custodians of the urban environment. Apparent indifference is not a victimless crime. The area is the victim. Delinquent behaviour, ie allowing buildings to degrade, undermines the other owners who are acting responsibly by maintaining their properties. That the CIF is abandoning buildings a stone's throw from the city during a housing crisis underscores the lamentable state of the Irish property market. What is the Minister of Housing going to do about this? When an organisation with influence over housing and development policy can show such blatant disregard for the city, we know we have reached a new low in terms of bureaucratic incompetence and rank hypocrisy. We hear people talking on the airwaves about rebuilding Ireland, while at the same time allowing the delipidated buildings they own in Ranelagh fall down during morning rush hour. You couldn't make it up. It is clear that we need substantial fines imposed on reckless property owners Can someone take responsibility, please – if only for the credibility of the State that indulges such organisations? What does it take? A pedestrian, motorist or cyclist to be killed under the crumbling debris? Although it is particularly egregious, the canal episode isn't an isolated incident. GeoDirectory , the data company used by An Post , has estimated that 14,500 residential and commercial properties lie vacant across Dublin , with 4,000 of these occupying prime locations in the city centre. In the past year or so, dereliction has become substantially worse, with a more than 20 per cent increase on the 12,000 or so vacant properties identified by GeoDirectory in the capital in 2023 . Between the two canals are 4,082 vacant buildings. Half of these are commercial, roughly one-third are residential and the remainder are mixed-use. Dublin 2 is the worst offender, home to 41 per cent of vacant buildings, of which the vast majority (75 per cent) are commercial. The Victorian commercial districts of Dublin 1 (Parnell, Talbot, Capel and Dorset Streets) account for more than half (610) of the vacant flats above commercial units. The city is literally falling down in front of our eyes. And while dilapidation in Dublin is particularly acute, the same story applies across Ireland's urban centres, from Drogheda to Cork and Waterford to Limerick. [ Construction Industry Federation owes €140,000 in derelict levies at €23m site of Dublin 6 terrace collapse Opens in new window ] [ Irish Rail seeks 'maximum' number of homes for new Dublin suburb, despite Uisce Éireann warning on capacity Opens in new window ] Dereliction and vacancy are the result of choices made by individuals, companies and even lobby groups like the CIF. It is time to put a price on those choices because dereliction destroys not just the buildings themselves but also the streets. Allowing your building to become derelict must be called out as antisocial behaviour. It is clear that we need substantial fines imposed on reckless property owners, both to change their behaviour and to send a signal. Many of these people are hoarding their buildings in the hope of selling on at a higher price. Such behaviour must be discouraged with a penalty. For example, once a building is categorised derelict by the local council, the owners should face a hefty fine on their total income – not just their property income. Owners shouldn't be permitted to hide behind corporate trickery, allowing them to pretend a different corporate facade to escape the financial consequences of their social irresponsibility. In no time, the property market would be flooded with buildings that were previously hoarded As well as the big stick of punishment, the State might try something softer, at least initially. Realising that people react to incentives, why not incentivise bad owners to sell to good owners who will do something positive with the site? When it comes to vacancy and dilapidation, owners often claim penury, or some legal familial or inheritance dispute to explain why their property is allowed to degrade. So why not issue an amnesty to coax them to sell the properties within a year, after which point a draconian penalty is imposed to make them change their ways. The council might give these owners a chance to avoid a big fine by giving an amnesty – a last chance to sell. If they sell immediately, they can avoid the fine; if not, the council will come down on them like a fiscal ton of bricks. In no time, the property market would be flooded with buildings that were previously hoarded, driving down prices in the city where prices were, up to recently, thought to be only going upwards. This is doable at the stroke of a pen with a bit of political courage. Wouldn't it be great if our politicians tried to fix what's right under their noses as opposed to opining on the global picture, which they can do nothing about? As for the CIF, on behalf of your members – the builders of Ireland – have you no shame?
