Councillor queries repercussions for landlords of derelict properties in Tipperary who will not engage with council
Cllr Mary Hanna Hourigan made the query during the December MD meeting for Tipperary/Cahir/Cashel
In a recent meeting of Tipperary/Cahir/Cashel Municipal District, Cllr Mary Hanna asked Shane Grogan of Tipperary County Council about owners of derelict properties not engaging with the council.
“In relation to where the notice has gone up and the owners are engaging, how difficult is that going to be, we have four houses all in dangerous condition, the owners will just not engage and in one case the owner is out of the country. The properties are very dangerous” said Cllr Hourigan.
Mr. Grogan replied: “There is a legal process to follow, initially we would hope that the team would engage with owners, on a cordial basis and we would encourage them to bring these sites back into use. Only as a last resort would we go to the stage where we are serving a notice on these properties or going through the whole court process. As we all know it’s an expensive process that takes time.
"Our preference would be to engage with people, to encourage them to call on their good nature, their sense of community and the fact now that there is significant funding available to bring these sites back into use that hadn’t been there before. A lot of people may not be aware of that.”
Mr. Grogan said if that doesn’t work they always have the option of imposing the derelict sites levy and then moving onto other processes within the legal process. Ultimately the end point for somebody not engaging is we can move to compulsory acquisition of the property if it’s of use to the council. Mr. Grogan stressed that the council does not want a situation where they acquire a lot of properties that they can do nothing with.
Even though they have a legal process in the background, firstly the council would like to engage with owners first on a more proactive basis. If they fail to engage with the council on that basis, then the council can move onto the legal process. Mr. Grogan agreed with Cllr Hourigan that “we can’t have a situation where we have dangerous sites that could be used for other projects, just left sitting there idly.”