Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
BOARDED-UP HOUSES and crumbling buildings are a common feature of towns and cities across Ireland.
Derelict buildings contribute significantly to Ireland’s housing crisis, and bringing them back into use is one of the Government’s aims for addressing social housing shortfalls and to get more homes on the market.
Under laws introduced in 1990, every local council keeps a Derelict Sites Register to encourage owners to bring vacant houses and land into use through the imposition of an annual levy of 7% of the property’s market value, which applies until the site is no longer derelict.
When someone objects to a local authority’s attempt to obtain a property via the Compulsory Purchase Order process, the council can make an application to An Coimisiún Pleanála to do so.
The Housing Act also allows local authorities to acquire vacant homes via CPO, which they also must apply to do via the commission.
The process is similar to making a planning application, and the board weighs up submissions from the council and the owner of the land before deciding whether a site can be subject to a CPO.
The number of properties that councils try to CPO via the commission every month is relatively small – records show that just 44 applications were made via the Compulsory Housing Acquisition Act in the whole of 2024.
The latest Geodirectory Residential Buildings report – released this week – found that there were 19,821 houses recorded as derelict in June 2025, a 2.9% drop compared to the same month last year, with the highest numbers in counties Mayo, Donegal and Galway.
The Irish Times also reported that heritage group An Taisce wrote to Dublin City Council accusing the local authority of breaching its obligations by “failing to register some of the most prominent derelict sites and buildings in the city centre”.
The Journal has been keeping track of the vacant and derelict properties that councils have sought to acquire in previous months.
Last month, just two local authorities – Meath County Council and Kildare County Council – applied to the commission to CPO any properties.
On 14 August, Meath County Council submitted an application to the planning commission to acquire a former petrol station and adjoining site near Navan, under the the Compulsory Housing Acquisition Act.
The petrol station has been on the council’s Derelict Sites Register since March of this year, and is valued by the local authority at €600,000.
Inspectors first visited the site in November last year, when it was considered ”unsightly and neglected in appearance and detracted from the character of neighbourhood”.
The site has two owners, according to the council: Edward Cunningham, who has an address in Navan, and his son John Cunningham who has an address in Virginia, Co Cavan.
A third potential owner, Mairtín Kearney, was contacted by the council via his solicitor when the local authority first tried to CPO the site in June of this year, but it was not clear whether he actually has a stake in the site.
The council only received responses from the two Cunninghams in relation to the CPO process.
Last December, John Cunningham wrote to the council to express an interest in carrying out remedial works to the property before selling the site, but is also noted to have discussed “complexities with financial dealings” which would prevent a sale.
Meath County Council then sought to CPO the site at the end of May, but received an objection from Eddie Cunningham at the end of July outlining the history of the business and why he disagreed with the council’s assertion that the property is derelict.
Cunningham told the council that the site was a filling station and classic car business that had operated for decades, starting in 1968, and once employed more than 30 people.
However, he said the business suffered a “major setback” around 2007-2008, when the council closed the road outside the property; he said this was initially due to happen for three months, but that the road actually closed for 12 months, impacting the business.
He said the property had never been left to decay and that a compulsory acquisition would “significantly undervalue the property”.
In a report following Eddie Cunningham’s objection, a council inspector outlined several previous attempts to engage the Cunninghams on other derelict sites in the county and claimed “there is no desire or any intention to remove dereliction from their sites”.
The report also said it the council is “adamant” that the petrol station will remain derelict for years without compulsory acquisition.
Kildare County Council submitted an application on 18 August to CPO two properties at Abbey Road in Naas, under the Compulsory Housing Acquisition Derelict Site Act.
The properties are adjacent two-storey townhouses which are part of a terrace of buildings, and the council placed both on the Derelict Sites Register in May of this year.
Their owner is named in planning documents as John Hipwell, a resident of nearby Kilteel, who objected to the CPO on the basis that he had received planning permission to build three new townhouses on the site in 2020.
Hipwell told the council that he wanted to sell the two houses and keep one for himself so he could move to Naas because of his age, as Kilteel is a very rural area.
He also said he was attempting to obtain the services of a builder to redevelop the site, but that this proved difficult because the site was not straightforward to develop on.
Responding to this objection in a report to the council, an inspector said there had been back-and-forth correspondence between the local authority and Hipwell since 2021 about redeveloping the properties and a number of false starts on the project.
They also said that the council’s Vacant Homes unit had been informed in March 2024 that Hipwell was interested in selling the properties to the council; however, an agreement could not be reached on the selling price and negotiations subsequently broke down.
The council’s current valuation for the houses is not clear.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say