Last week Olivia Kelly reported in The Irish Times that Dublin City Council was “finally” appearing “to be arming itself” in the battle against dereliction. Its superweapon, apparently, will be the Dublin City Development Corporation, a special-purpose vehicle (SPV) dedicated to city regeneration. This will happen “in the coming months”. The non-statutory SPV will have an “independent” board of directors that will be able to borrow and invest without affecting the council’s or the State’s balance sheet. We are told that the independent development company will have a “five- to 10-year business plan” but “will take time to scale up”.
In the meantime, the council will try to implement what it calls a “bold urban rejuvenation pilot” for two derelict properties on Middle Abbey Street and North Frederick Street, two of the most notorious derelict properties in the city centre.
Ronan McGreevy reported on Monday that 20 derelict properties visited by The Irish Times a year previously remained decrepit.
In 2024, in the dying days of the last government, a Dublin city taskforce was established under the chairmanship of David McRedmond. Its report drew attention to the problem of city-centre dereliction in the capital. Its imaginative proposals to counter dereliction were allocated for action by Dublin City Council and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.
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Two years later, we see outlines of a feeble response by Dublin City Council. The proposed SPV is to be modelled on a previous body, Ballymun Regeneration Ltd. There is general acceptance that the SPV-led regeneration of Ballymun has been disappointing in its implementation and outcomes.
All decisions to compulsorily acquire derelict buildings and sites are hugely delayed and can be challenged, in which case the gargantuan Coimisiún Pleanála ultimately has to decide the matter.
We are well past the point at which “pilot” implementation projects and “independent” (whatever that means) SPVs are put on some vague indefinite delivery schedule. Dublin’s dereliction problem has been obvious for decades. The council’s role, whether as owner or passive observer of dereliction, has been obvious. I have written in these pages over the years calling for action by the Government to ensure our capital is not blighted by dereliction.
Unfortunately, a limited-liability company with an independent board described as a dereliction SPV is not the answer.
An entirely new approach is needed. New, workable and effective CPO powers must be enacted and vested in a body which has the legal powers, the financial resources, the expertise and, above all, a positive appetite to fight dereliction. We cannot afford our current incredibly dilatory legal and administrative processes.
Kelly reported on two modest terraced derelict houses, numbers 8 and 10 Ferguson Road, Drumcondra, which have been derelict for many, many years. Dublin City Council undertook emergency stabilisation works on the houses, involving extensive frameworks of steel girders, at front and rear in 2012. The council eventually secured permission from An Bord Pleanála to compulsorily acquire the properties in 2018. In 2026 these modest homes cannot be economically refurbished. The council was reported as “considering whether to level the houses and develop the land or to sell the property “back to the private market”.
Dublin City Council is reported to have 6,000 employees and hopes to provide accommodation for 4,000 of them at its planned new city office development at Camden Yard, Upper Kevin Street. With such a large workforce, the real question that arises is why it has utterly failed to deal with dereliction for the last 50 years.
The need for new workable legislative CPO powers has been obvious for decades. So has the incurable deficit in implementation at an executive level of urban dereliction remedies. Nothing in the massive and unworkable Planning and Development Act, 2024, attempts to deal with the issue.
With a few brave exceptions, elected members of Dublin City Council have been conspicuously unsuccessful in demanding or securing effective action by the council’s executive.
Dubliners must wonder why a huge derelict site remains after 10 years where the Ormond Hotel of Joycean fame once stood on Dublin’s quays. Likewise a site between Upper O’Connell Street and Moore Street which has been derelict for 20 years and is caught up in legal challenges.
Across Dublin, dereliction is common and remains stubbornly unaddressed. It’s a question of capacity and will both at executive and at legislative level.
Dublin’s dereliction Bermuda Triangle lies between Wood Quay, the Custom House and An Coimisiún Pleanála.
The solutions lie elsewhere – in Leinster House.
