City’s dereliction crisis: Call for action after surge of damaged building incidents

“A PERFECT storm” is how one Cork city councillor has described the ongoing situation of derelict or damaged buildings in the city and a lack of resources and funding at City Hall to combat the issue.

Independent councillor Kieran McCarthy made his comments following the revelation that, since the start of 2019, there have been 90 incidents of potentially dangerous buildings in Cork city.

Cork City Council told The Echo there were 40 incidents in 2019 and, to date in 2020, there have been 50.

A number of these incidents in 2020 have been high-profile as they occurred unexpectedly in the city centre.

Already this year, there have been incidents on Washington Street, Patrick Street, Tuckey Street, Liberty Street, North Main Street, and South Main Street.

Mr McCarthy said that he was calling for more building inspectors to be brought in to assess buildings in the city, and said that a root- and-branch analysis of the buildings on South Main Street and North Main Street was needed to prevent further incidents.

The councillor made the point that some of the buildings on South Main Street were more than 200 years old and had had little investment in recent years.

He called for some sort of ‘use it or lose it’ scheme to stop landlords from sitting on derelict properties for years, and said the fines for dereliction were not substantial enough.