Danger of derelict buildings highlighted as city council collects just 46% of derelict levies
Danger of derelict buildings highlighted as city council collects just 46% of derelict levies
A series of fires and violent crimes in derelict buildings are highlighting safety concerns, but Cork city council has collected less than half of 2022's derelict sites levies.
“It’s only a matter of time” before a life is lost in a fire in a derelict property, Cork North-Central TD Thomas Gould told the city council’s Joint Policing Committee (JPC) on Monday.
Cork City Council has collected just 46.3% of its annual dereliction levies to date in 2022, figures at the meeting revealed.
Deputy Gould raised the safety concerns while enquiring about measures to tackle a spate of fires in derelict properties this year, including the Good Shepherd Convent in Sunday’s Well, the Vita Cortex factory and the Sunset Ridge Hotel in Killeens.
“There seem to be an awful lot of fires taking place in the city and it’s only a matter of time before serious injury or death takes place,” Deputy Gould told the quarterly policing meeting.
Criminal investigations underway for Good Shepherd blaze
Some fires in derelict properties are being set, deliberately while others are occurring by accident, Chief Superintendent Thomas Myers told the meeting
“It seems some of the fires are malicious and some aren’t,” he said. “Maybe some might be homeless people lighting fires to keep warm.”
The fire at the former Good Shepherd Convent in Sunday’s Well in September was being taken seriously and criminal investigations were underway, CS Myers said.
A fire officer warned in early November that squatters and the homeless seeking shelter for the winter may be attempting to illegally tap into power supplies and were also lighting fires to stay warm.
Earlier this year Tripe + Drisheen revealed that Cork City Council has spent over half a million euros on shutters and security for local authority owned derelict properties in the last five years:
Cork City Chief Executive Ann Doherty told Monday’s JPC meeting that the owners of all derelict properties had the primary responsibility to make sure they were secured.
“People who own derelict property have to take measures to make sure that no-one comes to harm in the property they are responsible for,” she said.
Under half of city derelict levies collected
Cork City Council has collected just 46.3% of derelict levies to date this year, the meeting was told.
Of a total of €1.69 million levied against properties on the derelict sites register, Cork City Council had collected €752,366, or just under half.
Meanwhile, just six derelict sites have been removed from Cork City Council’s Derelict Sites Register due to them no longer being derelict so far this year.
25 derelict properties have been added to the register in 2022, with an additional 233 buildings “in the process” of being placed on the register.
Some of the violent crimes and fires that have taken place at derelict properties in Cork city and county in the past five years:
A fire at the derelict R&H Hall offices on Kennedy Quay in Cork city on November 23 is believed to be a deliberate case of arson.
A young woman who was raped in Fermoy on November 19 was found in the garden of a derelict house in Castlehyde; the man who has been charged with attacking her told Gardaí he had driven into the laneway at the property.
A blaze at the former Good Shepherd Convent in Sunday’s Well in September 2022 is believed to have been the work of vandals.
The derelict Sunset Ridge Hotel suffered a fire in June 2022, with a blaze at two derelict Shanakiel houses one week later and the former Vita Cortex factory going up in flames just weeks later.
Halloween 2021 saw firefighters tackle a blaze at a derelict property in Blarney, while there was a fire in March 2021 in a derelict house on Strawberry Hill.
Homeless man Frankie Dunne’s decapitated body was found in the garden of the derelict Castlegreina House on Boreenmanna Road in Cork city in December 2019.
St Kevin’s on the Lee Road went up in smoke in July 2017.
Amy McCarthy was beaten and strangled by her partner in a derelict office on Sheare’s Street in Cork City in April 2017.