{"id":478754,"date":"2026-05-11T06:48:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T06:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/478754\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T06:48:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T06:48:28","slug":"vacant-and-derelict-houses-bought-by-dublin-city-council-unused-due-to-severe-dilapidation-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/478754\/","title":{"rendered":"Vacant and derelict houses bought by Dublin City Council unused due to severe dilapidation \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 30 vacant and derelict properties bought by Dublin City Council<\/a> for social housing<\/a> since 2017 remain unused, and may no longer be viable for refurbishment, because of their extreme state of dilapidation.<\/p>\n

At least 20 of these buildings, including houses on Connaught Street in Phibsborough and Ferguson Road in Drumcondra, are under consideration for demolition, the council says, as they have been assessed as \u201cvery challenging\u201d properties \u201crequiring a significant amount of costly work\u201d if they were to be refurbished.<\/p>\n

The council\u2019s housing division is to present assessments on these 32 houses to city councillors and will in some cases be seeking permission to sell the properties because the local authority does not have the resources for their refurbishment.<\/p>\n

The 32 properties are located across the city and suburbs, with houses on the northside in the suburbs of Finglas, Phibsborough, Drumcondra and Chapelizod, and in the north inner city in the North Wall area, at Charleville Mall, and in the area around Mountjoy Square. On the southside these houses are located in the suburbs of Walkinstown and Harold\u2019s Cross, with others in the south inner city at Grand Canal Dock and in Creighton Street in Dublin 2.<\/p>\n

The council has, since 2017, been acquiring houses under a government scheme introduced to provide social housing through the purchase and refurbishment of long-term vacant and derelict properties.<\/p>\n

\"AA pair of unused derelict houses on Connaught Street in Phibsborough. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien <\/p>\n

The Buy and Renew Scheme targeted properties needing substantial works, often using compulsory purchase orders where owners were unwilling to sell to the council or to put their properties on the private market.<\/p>\n

The council has bought 112 vacant and derelict properties using the scheme and has refurbished 77 houses, returning them to use as social homes. Another three are expected to be completed and offered to council tenants by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

However, 32 remain vacant, with some deteriorated to the point of collapse and likely to require demolition. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0All 20 derelict properties highlighted by The Irish Times a year ago remain decrepitOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Senior council engineer with the housing division Robert Buckle last month said<\/a> a number of properties had been bought \u201cregardless of their condition\u201d in an effort to secure additional social homes in response to the housing crisis and some \u201creally shouldn\u2019t have [been] bought at all\u201d.<\/p>\n

The council has now completed assessments on all 32 homes to identify the extent of works needed in each property. \u201cThis assessment has demonstrated the scale of work required and for some homes a significant amount of costly work is needed,\u201d Buckle said. \u201cIt is accepted that these homes should not be left vacant and that the council must assess how best to bring these homes back into use.\u201d<\/p>\n

In some cases, the council is proposing to sell the buildings back to the private market. The council intends to contract estate agents to market the first of these houses, a row of derelict cottages in Chapelizod, within weeks.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe houses at Mulberry Cottages on Martin’s Row in Chapelizod remain unused. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien <\/p>\n

The seven houses at Mulberry Cottages on Martin\u2019s Row near the Phoenix Park were bought by the council in 2022, several years after they had been placed on the Derelict Sites Register. The council had at the time hoped to have completed refurbishment work within two years. However, the early 19th-century houses remain vacant, with their front doors and ground-floor windows boarded up but painted to resemble functioning doors and windows.<\/p>\n

Detailed assessments of the condition of each of the 32 houses will be presented to a working group of councillors in the coming weeks. However, if the sale of the Chapelizod cottages is successful, the councillors will be asked to consider selling more of the houses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 30 vacant and derelict properties bought by Dublin City Council for social housing since 2017 remain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,10474,30330,52,784,18,13,14,6,8752,21681,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,18575,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-478754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-chapelizod","11":"tag-drumcondra","12":"tag-dublin","13":"tag-dublin-city-council","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-featured-news","16":"tag-featurednews","17":"tag-headlines","18":"tag-housing-crisis","19":"tag-housing-demand","20":"tag-ie","21":"tag-ireland","22":"tag-latest-news","23":"tag-latestnews","24":"tag-main-news","25":"tag-mainnews","26":"tag-news","27":"tag-phibsborough","28":"tag-top-stories","29":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116554610243002616","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}