The Lord Mayor of Cork yesterday defended Cork City Council’s collecting of derelict site levies after it was revealed the city is owed more than €4m in uncollected charges.

Fine Gael councillor Deirdre Forde, the mayor of Cork City, said the council has a higher-than-average collection rate for derelict site levies, and is constantly reviewing its collection process.

A recent parliamentary question by Sinn Féin’s Cork North Central TD Thomas Gould showed the city council had collected just €570,000 in derelict site levies last year — approximately one third of the amount levied. It also showed that Cork City Council is owed €4.3m in uncollected derelict site levies.

“We have a higher-than-average collection rate as is, and on an ongoing basis we are reviewing all our options to improve our collection of levies,” Ms Forde told The Echo.

“We don’t have up-to-date figures, as they are currently being compiled, but up to June we have collected over €234,000 in derelict site levies, and I would like to reiterate that we are doing everything that we can to improve the situation.”

Responding to criticisms that the 95 properties on the derelict sites register did not reflect the true level of dereliction, Ms Forde said the city council could only work within the boundaries of the law.

Jude Sherry and Frank O’Connor, who are prominent campaigners against dereliction and homelessness, said failure to address problems with the current law, which has been in existence for decades, amounted to what they described as a dereliction of duty on a national level.

“If our councils were supported to get a higher collection rate, they might actually be motivated to register all derelict buildings,” they stated.

“Full registration and full collection rates could be a strong enough warning to motivate owners of derelict buildings to either sell or renovate. Full collection rates would also give councils the funding to bring their own vacant and derelict housing homes back into use, as well as build new social homes.”

Fianna Fáil city councillor John Sheehan said there was a need for national legislation to address legal complexities.

“It sounds great that we are owed €4m, but the reality is trying to collect that can be a huge challenge, legally, and sometimes the cost of it isn’t worth what you actually collect by the end, because someone may have died, or may have gone abroad, or a company may have gone into liquidation, so sometimes it can be very problematic,” he said.