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Irish Times

Living next door to dereliction: ‘It's been rotting for years … Rats all over the place'

Standing in their front garden in Co Cork , Jennifer O'Regan and her husband Roy point to the wheelie bins. 'The rats come up the wall and go over to the bins,' says Roy. 'My daughter has a video of them running all over the bins.' Jennifer adds: 'They don't even run, they walk, as if to say this is our home as well and you're not moving us.' The couple, who bought their home on Churchfield Avenue, around 4km north of Cork City 17 years ago, attribute the presence of rats to a vacant council house next door. READ MORE The property has been boarded up for the past year having been empty for around two years before that following the death of a tenant. [ Derelict properties: CIÉ has not paid levies on vacant site as it has not received 'any bills' Opens in new window ] 'He was a great neighbour and kept the place immaculate,' says Jennifer. 'Now it's been left rotting for years and there are rats all over the place. You have rats, flies and dumping. 'I couldn't let my daughter Remie out the back for the last year because of the rats running around the place.' Two doors down from the empty property is another boarded-up house, which residents say has been vacant for close to five years. Some work has been carried out on it in recent years, including external installation, but the house remains vacant. Derelict council housing at Shannon Lawn, Mayfield, Cork city. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision 'We cut the grass and the trees ourselves in the front garden of it just to try and make it look a bit nicer,' says Roy. 'Our kids are coming home and looking at two boarded-up houses. It's not good for their morale. They've been mocked once or twice in school, this kind of thing of 'you're living in the Bronx'.' He adds: 'It brings down the area. There's people crying out for houses and they would take the houses as they are. There's four houses boarded up around here within about 80 yards of each other.' Another neighbour, who lives close to the second empty house, adds: 'The place has just been left to rot basically. It's embarrassing when anyone is calling to the house. 'The place is infested with rats. It's disgusting and horrible to look out at the back garden. We had to get a cat. It's a disgrace with all the people that are homeless and crying out for homes and you have this just sitting here.' [ Vacancy, dereliction and demolition of existing buildings should be reduced, building group says Opens in new window ] The two houses on Churchfield Avenue are owned by Cork City Council, which says it expects they will both be returned to its stock in the third quarter of this year. Cork North-Central Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould says there are families who would 'give their right hand for these houses'. He highlights other properties outside the city, in Mayfield and Knocknaheeney, which have been boarded up for years. Gould recently received figures from 29 of the 31 local authorities nationally showing there are more than 830 council homes that have been boarded up and vacant for more than a year. The garden of a derelict council house in Churchfield, Cork city. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision Cork City Council has 99 properties that have been boarded up for more than two years, according to the figures, and has the highest level of vacant stock along with Donegal and Limerick. Void is the term used when council tenants vacate houses or flats, either transferring to somewhere more suitable or leaving to purchase their own home. The death of a tenant or a marital breakdown can also result in a unit becoming void, and these can vary greatly in terms of the level of refurbishment required. Houses generally get boarded up as soon as they become vacant and remain so until they are refurbished and ready to be let again. Locals say the vacant homes 'bring down the area'. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision The Department of Housing says it is working with local authorities, as part of a commitment in the programme for government, to improve the turnaround times of vacant social housing units. A report from 2023 indicated that, on average, around 2.81 per cent of the social housing stock is vacant, with a turnaround time of 33 weeks. The department contributes an average of around €11,000 to refurbish a void unit, with councils also able to avail of energy efficiency grants. The average cost of doing up a void property across the country is €28,000, with those in cities generally higher. Cork City Council says it 'appreciates' the funding provided by the department through the voids programme and Energy Efficiency Retrofit Project. 'Although funding is limited, it enables us to move forward with our key priorities and make meaningful progress.' While some insulation work has been done, the property remains empty. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision Lord Mayor of Cork City Dan Boyle says the local authority 'can and should be doing better' at returning vacant properties to use. The Green Party councillor, a former TD and senator, references funding as well as having to rely on private contractors as issues. 'I think there is a fair criticism about the length of time we take doing them and the scale of repair work we insist on having done before it's reallocated,' he says. Boyle says the ability of councils 'to directly affect repairs' is a problem, with reliance on private contractors adding an element of delay as 'you are tendering and managing and so forth'. 'That would have been less so when you had a direct unit within your local authority that was doing this work directly,' he says. 'I consider that part of the problem. If local councils were restructured along the lines they used to be when we had better housing programmes in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, we probably would be a lot more efficient and doing this work a lot more quickly.' Locals say their children have been bullied in school because of the dereliction. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision Last week, Gould and his party brought forward a motion in the Dáil calling for urgent action on vacant council housing. His party colleague Seán Crowe spoke of how people come to his constituency office in southwest Dublin asking whether they can take on a vacant house and 'do it up themselves'. 'I have to tell them it doesn't work like that,' he said. 'People just do not get why these properties are lying idle.' Gould added: 'This is a simple solution. It will not solve the housing crisis but for hundreds if not thousands of families it will make a real difference. There are empty homes and we have families who need those homes who are in emergency accommodation or sharing houses between three generations, using box bedrooms.' Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould at Shannon Lawn, Mayfield, Cork city. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision In response, Minister for Housing James Browne said the Government would continue doing everything in its power to minimise turnaround times of vacant council homes. This, he added, would include implementing strategic programmes for planned maintenance informed by stock condition surveys. 'When these houses are made vacant, there is a family that have just been living in it,' he told the House. 'How it can take months and years to put a new family back in is incomprehensible. It should not be happening and as the Minister, I'm going to make sure that local authorities are not indulging in these delays anymore. 'If there is a family moving out, a health and safety assessment and basic repairs should be carried out but leaving houses vacant for months and years on end – that is not on the Government, that is on the local authority.'