Number of unfinished estates falls

The number of unfinished housing estates has fallen to 1,770, down from more than 2,800 two years ago, according to the 2012 Unfinished Housing Developments Survey published by the Government today.

Leitrim tops the list as the local authority with the highest number of vacant units per 1,000 households, followed by Longford, Cavan, Sligo and Roscommon. Waterford city and Limerick city have the lowest number of empty homes per population.

Minister for Housing Jan O’Sullivan said 1,100 of the remaining unfinished estates were “in a seriously problematic condition", and the unfinished housing developments committee would be focusing on them in coming months. Almost all of those that have come off the unfinished list have been completed.

“With regard to bulldozing or otherwise, I suppose that is something that I think is going to be the issue really we are going to have to address in the next couple of months in terms of making the hard decisions,” she said.

She said she expected “just a fraction” of the problematic developments would be demolished. “That would be the most sensible solution, whereby it would be more expensive and more problematic to finish it off rather than to put it back to agricultural use.”

Some of the 1,100 cases involved entire estates, while others involved small portions of estates. Ms O’Sullivan said she hoped there would be “a fairly strong degree of clarity” as to the future outcome of all of the developments by next spring.

The latest report shows a decrease of 37 per cent in the number of unfinished developments since 2010, and a 27 per cent decrease in the number of vacant units. Some 296 unfinished developments have been moved off the list in the past year.

See environ.ie for the full survey of unfinished housing developments.