It made for interesting reading, this weekend, to see the plight of dereliction in our nation’s capital given such coverage in national papers.
It was the collapse of a terrace of houses near the Grand Canal that spurred this sudden interest in vacancy, with much of the coverage focused solely on Dublin, overlooking once more the rest of the little country that lives outside The Pale.
We don’t need statistics to tell us that derelict buildings quite literally litter the streets and towns of Ireland – all of Ireland.
It was 1990 when the Derelict Sites Act was introduced, and within one year each local authority was to have a formal register.
However, until last year West Cork did not even have a register for the district; it had been the only district without one for years.
For a building to be subject of a Compulsory Purchase Order it must first be registered on this list, ergo no list, means no action.
In total, in the entire county, there are 125 buildings on their register.
To be fair, someone has lit a fire under the Council as they have recently established a Town Regeneration Office to deal specifically with the problem.
It is late, but welcome; in recent years a building collapsed onto the street in Mitchelstown, while in Charleville an entire street had to be closed for safety fears.
In Midleton, councillors talked about vermin in vacant buildings in the town.
These buildings, affected by the Storm Babet floods, have never been cleaned or dealt with. In Youghal, one elderly couple lived in fear as the house attached to theirs is in danger of collapsing, taking theirs with it.
These houses and bars and old shops remain empty and at the same time, we are also faced with a creaking system of water infrastructure.
While the Council and elected representatives point the finger at Uisce Éireann, they are neglecting the fact that these empty buildings could in fact be on the wastewater network, and ‘taking up’ capacity.
On one hand, you have someone unable to build in a town or in a village because there’s no room on the network.
On the other, you have an idle building collapsing in on itself, but it is actually connected to the water network.
There is a right to property, but there is no right to hoarding property.
There can be issues with probate, inheritance, ownership rights, but are we to believe that every one of these houses are all tied up in such a mess?
Another excuse made, and not entirely invalid, is that rigorous planning rules demand that some historical elements of a building be retained, tying would-be developers and owners in knots.
Ultimately, it prevents any work being done at all.
This is a ludicrous, frightening, and even dangerous level of bureaucracy, that a building might collapse on to a street for the want of an original sash window.
For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost, eh?
There’s a line to be trod between ripping down a beautiful building or facade to be replaced with something of no architectural beauty, and being held hostage to that same building’s history.
No one could possibly claim it’s impossible to treat each on a case-by-case basis, tactfully and sensibly.
A house will not stand forever. It will collapse, and it could be in 10 years, it could be in 50 years, or it could be on a Tuesday evening some week at 4.30pm when kids are passing on their way home from school.
Ignoring this issue reflects a stunning lack of respect to a community, and a gross visual representation of the have-plenty versus the have-nots.
In Cork city, there are homeless people sleeping in the doorways of empty, huge, and vacant, buildings.
Throughout the country, there are adults back living with their parents, mothers in hotels with their children – all passing by big, empty buildings, each and every day.
