Funds needed for seven ghost estates

SEVEN unfinished housing estates have been identified in County Clare where construction activity has come to a complete standstill and the developer cannot be contacted.

Clare County Council’s priority list of “ghost estates”, which require Department of the Environment funding to complete, includes three in South-East Clare and one each in Bunratty, Shannon, Newmarket-on-Fergus and Sixmilebridge.
Considerable surprise has been expressed that no estates in Ennis, North Clare or West Clare have been included on the list.
The estates pinpointed by Clare County Council meet the criteria of category four of the department’s recent circular on unfinished housing.
Estates are only included in this category where there is no construction activity on the site, efforts to contact the developer or site owner have been unsuccessful, serious public safety issues are present and efforts to secure compliance from the developer/site owner have been unsuccessful.
The estates listed are: Dun Rí, Bunratty; Cluain Aoibheann, Shannon; Phase Two of Gleann Cora, Newmarket-on-Fergus; Chuirt an Droichead, Sixmilebridge; Bruachlan/Ghrianán and stormwater network in the McInerney part of Westbury; Carrig Midhe, Corbally and Manor Grove, Ardnacrusha.
The council has advised the department it has no funds to address the required remediation works and stressed the necessity for adequate resources to be made available.
The next stage is for the council to specifically identify the remedial works required to deal with the safety aspects of each site, including a cost estimate and to prioritise the estates within this category.
Councillor Patricia McCarthy called on the Department of the Environment to put the necessary mechanism in place to complete all unfinished estates in the county.
Stating lessons have to be learned from the over-supply of houses during the Celtic Tiger, she proposes that a certain percentage of the price of a new house in an estate should be retained in a holding fund until the estate is fully finished.
She highlighted the fact that all of the planning bonds may not cover the cost of the work needed to bring unfinished housing estates up to a safe and acceptable standard.
“A new mechanism has to be put in place to ensure that what happened in the last 10 years doesn’t happen again. The planning bonds, which were put in place for housing estates years ago, were too low and I don’t know if the ones put in place recently will cover all of the cost of finishing some unfinished estates,” she said.
Councillor Brian Meaney said category four might have to be extended to include developers who are in correspondence with the council but are not being fully cooperative.
Even when efforts to contact developers are unsuccessful, he claimed there is an onus on the council to fully pursue these individuals to live up to their responsibilities and cover the cost of making estates safe.
Welcoming the inclusion of three estates in South-East Clare for funding, Councillor Cathal Crowe called for swift action to be taken by the council.
At a recent Killaloe Electoral Area meeting, he said, “With developers nowhere to be seen, residents have begun to feel somewhat abandoned. In Westbury there is a large construction site compound that has been left in an abandoned state. This compound is not very secure and children can easily gain access to it.
“There are a number of potential hazards on site that require immediate attention. The compound is about the size of a football pitch and is an awful eyesore within the estate,” he said.
“The stormwater pumps in Westbury have failed on a number of occasions and when this happens Parteen GAA pitch, not to mention a number of the lower lying avenues of the Westbury estate, are at risk of flooding.
“The council need to take charge of this infrastructure and I am hopeful the Department of the Environment will assist them in this regard,” he concluded.