The owners or occupiers of 9,000 listed buildings in Dublin city have been given a new deadline of September 20th if they wish to object to the redesignation of their properties as protected structures.
So far, only 176 of the 20,000 owners or occupiers notified by Dublin Corporation have appealed against this change in status, including 43 owning List 1 buildings in such important areas as Merrion Square, O'Connell Street and Westmoreland Street.
The objectors include Hardwicke Ltd, the long-established property company, whose joint managing director, Mr Mark Kavanagh, recently appeared before the Moriarty tribunal. It is seeking to have the interior of its Wellington Road headquarters delisted. Mr Paul Byrne, joint managing director, said the end-of-terrace Victorian house had to be gutted 15 years ago because of dry rot and all of its interiors date from that time. "We also don't want to be caught in a situation where we can't redecorate a room".
Several objections have been received from Upper Leeson Street, notably from Mr Martin Reynolds, an architect who has been conducting a vigorous correspondence on the issue. He maintains the legislation "is using a steamroller to crush a snail". Referring to the fact that interiors are included, he said: "Surely this is madness except for really important houses. Who is to decide if dark fittings in a kitchen can be replaced by light ones or if stained wood panelling can be painted to get in more light?"
Mr Reynolds said it was easy to make owners responsible for the preservation of protected structures, but what if they were elderly or a low-income family? As for the grants available under the scheme, he said £10,000 was "nothing" to replace a roof.
The penalties for failure to comply - fines of up to £1 million and/or five years in jail - put the owners of historic buildings in the same class as drugs criminals, while monitoring compliance would result in the planning system becoming "bogged down in trivia".
Mr Christy Geoghegan, principal officer of the corporation's planning department, said the deadline for objections had been extended because of the sheer volume of work involved in notifying so many people and inspecting properties.
"All of these premises will have to be examined against the new criteria in the legislation - the 1999 Planning Act - and then we'll have to report on each and every one of them so that the city council can decide whether to uphold or reject the objections." The corporation has appointed a conservation officer, Ms Susan Rowntree, an assistant and two secretaries to deal with this new and time-consuming area, with other staff and 20 qualified consultants to carry out inspections.
"The statutory obligations are proving to be much more onerous than we anticipated," Mr Geoghegan said. "Even the issuing of notices is not straightforward because we have to confirm the identity of owners and occupiers in each case; it has to be very precise."
Over 200 applications have been made for declarations that certain works - such as repainting a room or new tiles in a kitchen - would not affect the character of protected structures. These will also require on-site inspections.
Mr Geoghegan said just under £1 million in conservation grants was being made available this year for protected structures in the city and said the Department of the Environment had firmly guaranteed this level of aid for five years.
But many local authorities are doing little or nothing to implement the new legislation, according to Mr Ian Lumley, newly appointed heritage officer of An Taisce. "Outside Dublin most of them have been woefully ineffective at listing buildings," he said.
"A number of local authorities, such as Limerick Corporation, have stated that they simply don't have the resources, either in planning or legal staff, to implement the legislation while others see it as just more bureaucracy from Dublin meddling in their back yards."
Mr Lumley said the key weakness of the 1999 Planning Act was that it left too much discretion to local authorities. "For example, Sligo Corporation recently voted in favour of demolishing a historic warehouse complex despite a plea from Sile de Valera to save it."
Though the guidelines drawn up by Duchas, the heritage service, were "fuzzy in many ways", they were designed to curb "a national epidemic of needless destruction". The fears expressed by some property owners were completely unfounded, he said.
