An Taisce has urged Dublin City Council to place three of the city’s most prominent vacant properties on the Derelict Sites Register and immediately enforce levies on their owners.
The national heritage body has accused the council of breaching its obligations by “failing to register some of the most prominent derelict sites and buildings in the city centre”.
The properties include a site on O’Connell Street that has been derelict since the late 1970s.
Almost 140 properties, which include buildings and sites, are listed on the council’s Derelict Sites Register, about half of which are in the central postcodes of Dublin 1, 2, 7 and 8.
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However, more than 700 properties in the same area are vacant for more than four years, according to An Post’s GeoDirectory records, and many are in a ruinous state.
In a letter to senior council officials this week, An Taisce said it “formally requests legal action” is taken by the council “to ensure that all derelict sites and buildings in the city centre are registered under the Derelict Sites Act 1990”, and that levies are imposed.
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Properties on the register are subject to a 7 per cent levy. Interest on unpaid levies is at a rate of 1.25 per cent per month.
An Taisce identified three prominent city properties of particular concern which it said “require registration and levy imposition” with immediate effect.
These include part of UK property group Hammerson’s 5.5-acre plot stretching from O’Connell Street to Moore Street. The firm has owned the site since 2016 and has secured planning permission for its redevelopment, but this is subject to ongoing judicial review proceedings.
The site includes a plot beside the former Carlton Cinema on O’Connell Street, vacant since 1979, and the historic Conway’s pub on Parnell Square which has been designated “endangered” by the council.
The vacant site of the former Ormond Hotel, which featured in James Joyce’s Ulysses, has also been identified by An Taisce. The hotel, which was built in 1906 at 7-11 Ormond Quay, closed in 2005.
Planning permission was granted in 2017 to Monteco Holdings, a subsidiary of Singapore company Plato Capital, for a new hotel. Demolition and site clearance went ahead the following year.
Monteco has since applied for, and been granted, two extensions to the duration of its planning permission, but the hotel has not been built and the site has recently been put on the market.
The former music venue and market Mother Redcaps, built as a factory in 1875, is the third building of particular concern to An Taisce. The building is part of a complex of sites, including the Iveagh Market, that have been closed since the 1990s and are at the centre of a legal dispute over ownership involving the council and Temple Bar hotelier Martin Keane.
“It should be clear that the placing of a building up for sale, attachment of sale sign or sale agreed sign on the building or site, or transfer to a new owner should not in any way inhibit registering the building and/or site under the Derelict Sites Act and imposing a levy,” An Taisce’s letter said.
“The same consideration applicates to all cases where a planning application is mooted or proposed, or an application is either lodged or granted or expired, such as in the three prominent cases cited,” it said.
An Taisce said the council has yet to respond to its letter sent on Monday. The council did not respond to queries from The Irish Times. A spokesman for Hammerson said it did not wish to comment. Mr Keane and Plato Capital did not respond to queries.
