Taoiseach to make further enquiries about vacant Macroom apartments 

TAOISEACH Leo Varadkar has said he is going to make further enquiries about a complex of 20 apartments above Dunnes Stores in Macroom which have lain vacant since the department store opened in 2005.

In response to a query from The Echo, Mr Varadkar said he had enquired about the empty apartments previously but didn’t recall the response.

“I will follow up on it again because there really shouldn’t be any derelict or empty residences/residential properties in a housing crisis unless there’s a very good reason for it. I don’t know if there is a very good reason but I will check up on it again,” Mr Varadkar said.

Dunnes Stores were contacted for comment.

Speaking after he and County mayor Cllr Frank O’Flynn opened the €280m Baile Mhúirne/Macroom N22 bypass, Mr Varadkar said that local authorities and central government had to work together to tackle the issue of dereliction.

“We’re in a place now where we have a whole set of measures, carrots and sticks, to deal with the dereliction, grants to encourage people to bring old buildings back into use and they’re going very well — over 4,000 applications already, a huge number coming here from County Cork — but also things like the vacant property tax which is kicking in at the moment and derelict site taxes,” he said.

“One thing we’re really encouraging local authorities to do is to avail of the €150m fund we’ve put in place ... to purchase properties that are derelict, disused, or vacant to bring them back to life, sell them on and then they can use the money again to do the same for another property,” the Taoiseach added.

Mr Varadkar’s comments came on the eve of the deadline for the registration with the Revenue of vacant homes for the purposes of payment of the new tax introduced in last year’s budget.

Anti dereliction campaigners Frank O’Connor and Jude Sherry said they welcomed the €150m fund but said the Government needed to invest far more in bringing derelict homes back to use.

“We also welcome all the other measures being proposed, although the vacant homes tax is far too low at 0.3%, it should be at least 5% to make a real difference, and there are far too many exemptions,” they told The Echo.

“We also urgently need another fund to enable the councils to bring all of their property up to standard through repairing existing stock, and bringing all vacated homes urgently back into use.”