Derelict Dublin

at

Meanwhile…

Yikes.

Thanks Lorcan

UPDATE:

On the front page of today’s Irish Mirror…

Austin Kavanagh tweetz:

What have we become as a nation, a mother and her 3 children eating a meal from a soup kitchen in the street… this is beyond sad.

Homeless children forced to queue at the roadside for food as volunteers struggle to cope with surge in demand (Irish Mirror)

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27 thoughts on “Derelict Dublin

  1. Dhod

    I follow Frank on Twitter. He does make the odd valid point but the vast majority of his tweets are empty and angry. He seems to hate any type of development in the city

    1. Rob_G

      Absolutely – there isn’t a proposal for a building over 5 storeys that Frank McDonald doesn’t take issue with. He doesn’t want anything impinging on the view from his loft in Temple Bar.

    2. The Dude

      It is not known if Frank has ever been guilty of having an original idea.

      Angry tweets consisting of expletives smack of desperation for attention.

      His departure from the Irish Times has not seemingly been much missed.

  2. eoin

    “Derelict Dublin”? Caribbean Dublin, more like.

    Find out who the registered owner is of those derelict properties. As often as not, it’s a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. And who owns the company? Who knows, who can tell, there’s no beneficial register for BVI companies.

  3. kellMA

    That really is a shocking amout of derelict properties in the centre. I wonder how that compares to other european capitals?

  4. Col

    This is shameful.
    A vacant site tax (properly implemented) would sort it out. This is Eoghan Murphy’s biggest and least forgivable failure as minister.

    1. millie st murderlark

      He’s just a pencil with a beard attached and it will only fool people for so long.

      I think they’re *finally* starting to catch on.

      1. Col

        I thought so too. But didn’t make much of an impact at the locals, probably won’t make a huge impact at the next GE.
        Maybe I’m being too pessimistic…

    2. kellMA

      Also from a city planning point of view: how can it be good for the “brand” of a capital city to allow so many of its buidlings in the centre fall into such disrepair?!? We have a huge number of homeless working families in relatively prosperous times and just allow (what are often) beautiful buildings just crumble and fall apart.

      1. edalicious

        I know some those beautiful buildings are often deliberately allowed to fall apart to circumvent certain expensive laws around protected structures; it’s often much cheaper to knock and a rebuild a building rather than try to work around the existing structure so they let the building fall apart a bit and then say it’ll be too dangerous to try to salvage .

    3. bazzle

      Interesting point but.. How many of these vacant buildings are livable?

      Half of them could be derelict factories.

      Can you tax someone for owning a derelict factory that would cost millions to renovate?

      1. Rob_G

        If the owners can’t afford to carry out this work, they should be obliged to sell to someone who can. Taxes will help with this.

  5. Andrew

    I cannot understand the reluctance to introduce punitive measures or taxes for vacant or derelict buildings and sites.
    There is a 7 year capital gains tax exemption :
    •Gains made on the disposal of property acquired between 7 December 2011 and 31 December 2014 can get relief from CGT in certain cases. However, this relief does not apply if the property was acquired by gift or inheritance. The relief applies to all property, whether residential or non-residential. To get this relief the property must be held for more than 7 years.

    It seems to have had little impact. There needs to be more punitive measures.

    1. Sydney T

      This gains tax exemption fully explains why people are holding onto the vacant properties. They bought them when there was a property crash and prices were low. The prices have gone back up and the properties are now worth way more than what they paid for them. If they hold onto them a little longer (those bought after june 2012) they can sell them at the higher price and pay no capital gains tax. All the while doing absolutely nothing to benefit anyone but themselves and actually causing harm by stopping faster redevelopment.

  6. Jake38

    Vacant site tax, now.

    Zone everything within the M50 as suitable for housing.

    Build upwards…… (consistently opposed by Frank Mc Donald from his apartment in Temple Bar).

  7. A Person

    There is a vacant site levy which is payable this year. Get your facts right. The failure of providing housing in Dublin is (a) the elected representatives in Dublin City Council who have restricted heights in Dublin for the last 15 years by voting for lower heights in the Development Plan contrary to official advice. BTW is has been a leftist Council for most of this time. (b) people living in the suburbs protesting against any new housing in their area i.e. St Paul’s in Clontarf, led by another leftist politician. This is not a swipe at the left but they are as equally responsible as FG, andevery other political party in Dublin.

      1. A Person

        That is outdated. I do not have the up to date figures, but note that the article only refers to 17 local authorities. I do not think that any of the cities were included in those figures.

  8. small ads

    A government with balls would actually impose (rather than pretending) a hefty derelict building & derelict site tax, and impose a use-it-or-lose-it-by-compulsory-purchase system. Government shouldn’t be about profit.

  9. Dr.Fart MD

    even in this comments section on this article alone are more ideas than Murphy and the FG government are putting forward or willing to try out in 8 years of gov. They simply don’t do any work. If they did, Murphy would have plans. He’s had a lot of time, if I did the same non-amount of work in my job I’d have been fired a very long time ago and rightly so. I genuinely think FG ministers all believe their roles are just tokenistic and that actual work is down to others.

  10. SOQ

    There was a GIS map about the vacant land/properties in Cork posted on Broadsheet some time back, why has no-one done similar for Dublin? Even this mock-up is shocking- there are some incredibly selfish people out there.

    And why aren’t the Greens at the forefront of this exposure? Crazy amounts of property lying idle while people commute four hours a day. A real deal issue rather than tax on bloody coffee cups.

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