Ministers' promises are cold comfort to forlorn residents

BACKGROUND:The emphasis has to be on local authorities cleaning up their acts

ENHANCED PLANNING and development legislation will ensure the mistakes which led to the sprawl of ghost estates will not happen again, Ministers of State for Housing, Michael Finneran, and Planning, Ciarán Cuffe ,said yesterday.

This is cold comfort for the residents of 78,000 houses and apartments within the 2,800 ghost estates – many of whom are living on buildings sites.

An expert group is being set up to identify solutions for the future of the estates, but it has not been tasked with establishing a cause for the vast oversupply of housing, or asked to identify those responsible, or recommend and sanction.

Perhaps that is because the finger-pointing has been exhaustive over the two to three years since the housing market took a nose-dive. A consensus has been reached that incentives, bad planning decisions and excessive rezoning were the main contributors to the oversupply.

According to Mr Finneran it was a “timing mismatch” between the collapse in the demand for housing and the slowing of construction output, which had led to a “significant overhang” of unsold properties.

However, tax incentives which encouraged property developers and many “ordinary” home owners to buy property as an investment were not to blame. Fewer than 10 per cent of all the unfinished estates were built with tax breaks, he said.

In advance of the expert group’s report next January, it is clear that the onus is on local authorities, who made the planning decisions, to clean up their acts. Each county and city council will be sent a manual in the coming weeks advising them of their existing powers and best practice in managing estates.

However, it remained unclear yesterday what force the recommendations of the expert group will have. When asked whether unfinished apartments and houses would be bulldozed, Mr Cuffe said demolition was a matter for the owners of the estates and not the State.

Mr Finneran was more definite about one possible future for vacant housing. Some could be leased by local authorities for social housing. More than 2,500 private houses and apartments were approved this year for long-term leases by local authorities, and more would be provided next year, he said.

In terms of more than 43,000 empty and unfinished houses, this is a drop in the ocean, and even if funding for long-term leasing was substantially increased it would never resolve the problem.

Both Ministers were keen to emphasise the number of completed and occupied units, some 78,000. Each of these units represents an individual or family who may be living without proper street lighting, without a completed sewerage systems, with unfinished roads, with piles of rubble, or simply alone in a street without neighbours.

No matter what solutions emerge, most of these houses will remain vacant until the property market returns to some strength.

CORK: 'THE KIDS PLAYGROUND IS JUST WASTE GROUND'

AT GLEANN Ull in Ballyhooley, north Cork, half of the houses are uninhabited. Manholes protrude from the access roadway around the estate and the electricity to provide street lighting has not been connected, leaving much of the estate in darkness come nightfall.

An adjoining site that was to provide a playground for the estate's children houses a collection of rubble, scaffolding and a mobile home.

Branded a hazard by angry local residents, the site is freely accessible on three sides.

One woman who did not wish to be named said she and her husband bought their four-bed detached house in March 2008 for €380,000. Leaving behind a sprawling estate in Cork city, they took the opportunity to escape to the country. More than two years later, their ideal home in a village estate remains unfinished.

"We are happy enough with the house itself, it's been finished to a good quality standard. But while there is Tarmac on the road, the manhole covers are still raised all along the roadway. Of the 21 houses here, 11 are occupied.

"The second phase, which was never started, is just a pile of rubble."

The developer took down scaffolding that surrounded that site just recently.

"The kids playground is just waste ground now," she said.

LOUISE ROSEINGRAVE

PORTLAOISE: A TALE OF AN ESTATE SPLIT INTO TWO

PORTLAOISE became part of the Dublin commuter belt at the height of the boom as developers and investors poured money into the town. Now many of those developments are vacant or partially built.

The sparsely populated Rinuccini estate is essentially halved by a wooden hoarding. One half is complete, while the other lies vacant and semi-built.

Unemployed Polish construction worker Piotr Jakolowski is renting in the estate with his one-year-old daughter and partner. Piotr enjoys living there. A sense of community has built up between the mainly Polish inhabitants, he said.

Work stopped on the estate a year and a half ago and construction workers removed scaffolding from the structures last month, he said.

But another resident who was packing to leave the area expressed concern about the estate's future. He claimed to have heard youngsters in the unfinished part of the estate at night.

EOGHAN MacCONNELL

CO DUBLIN: 'ANYONE COULD BREAK INTO THOSE HOUSES'

ROWS OF houses at Castlemoyne estate in Balgriffin, Fingal, Co Dublin, look like an idyllic upmarket estate at first glance.

Closer inspection reveals fading door paint, peeling plastic on the windows and bare concrete floors in rows of unoccupied houses.

Fenced off from the rest of the estate are many unfinished homes. Around the corner, a large section of the estate is occupied. The three, four and five-bedroom houses were priced at between €360,000 and €655,000 in 2005.

Residents in the occupied parts seemed happy with their area, but had concerns about the impact of the vacant homes on house prices, who might move in, and security.

Resident Maria Maloney said there were no longer any security guards at the vacant houses and "now anyone could break into any of those houses and start living there". Milena Solis said she must walk down a street of unoccupied houses to get to the bus, and that it feels dangerous at night.

GENEVIEVE CARBERY