Clare: Owners of vacant properties 'coming out of the woodwork' due to council action

At the time of last year’s census, it stood at 127,419, up 8,602 or 7.2% on 2016 — when the increase had only been 1.4% on the previous census in 2011.

Kilrush area Clare County Council representative Cillian Murphy says there has been a real change in the way the council operates over the past two years. “We're really starting to see the benefits of having dedicated teams chasing down derelict and vacant properties,” he said.

“The Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) process is well underway in Clare. There's a small but very effective team and what we're seeing is the council telling property owners that unless they do something about their property, it will be declared derelict and may eventually be compulsorily acquired.”

It is not a straightforward process and often can take some time to complete, but it can be very effective, Mr Murphy said. “The acquisition of properties really only comes into play when owners are hard to pin down.

But what you are seeing, as word spreads, are lots of owners suddenly coming out of the woodwork and, suddenly, properties are going up for sale or being done up.

He said this is because owners don’t want their property to be declared derelict, as they will then be liable for levies, or for it to be compulsorily acquired.

“There was little or no consequence in the past, but there is now. It’s a slow-moving process but it is a bit like knowing if you are going to get a ticket or a clamp for parking illegally, you won’t park illegally. What's happening now is people are seeing follow-through from the council and they're saying ‘okay, they're not messing around here’.

“They are seeing that the council aren’t just sending out form letters and leaving it at that. They are following things up and they are compulsorily acquiring properties.”

Kilrush

When the Irish Examiner visited Kilrush two years ago, it had a dereliction problem and little was happening to reverse this trend. Today it is a different story as buildings that have been either vacant or derelict for years have been bought. 

Some of these have been snapped up by the council, but private individuals are also moving to buy buildings with a view to returning them to a more positive use. In May last year, for example, it was announced that the development potential of vacant properties on Kilrush’s main street, Moore St, was to be investigated by the council’s Vacant Homes Office.

Councillors for the area had been calling to address town centre dereliction for years. County councillor Ian Lynch said that as a result of the Moore St survey, Clare County Council has since bought a number of vacant properties on the street to develop new housing units to “reinvigorate in-town living”.

There are, for example, plans to provide 22 social housing units on one vacant derelict site on the street.

Two years ago, we reported there were negotiations underway about the future of the town’s iconic Old Mars Cinema on Frances Street. Opened in 1950, it had closed its doors more than 30 years ago and had fallen into disrepair.

Despite all manner of plans and proposals over the years for what had also been home to the Kilrush Operatic Society until 1966, nothing had come of them. However, a new future for it has finally been secured after the council bought it for €235,000 in March this year through Town and Village Renewal Scheme funding.

It is to be developed as what Mr Lynch said would be “an educational space in anticipation of the offshore energy industry”.

A large derelict building on Kilrush’s marina has also been bought by the council and is to be turned into a maritime training centre to serve the offshore renewable energy sector. It is one of the projects included in a €115m funding announcement for 23 landmark rural regeneration projects across the country by Minister for Rural and Community Development, Heather Humphreys, last December.

A new cafe is opening on the ground floor of Merchants Quay and Miniters Newsagent and Grocers Shop has been purchased by a private business. Next door, Kelly's bar and restaurant has also recently been purchased by a new owner.

The huge old Saint Mary's Convent building off Back Road, behind a boarded-up stone entrance and shrouded in trees, has also been sold and will be renovated as housing and apartments. The building on its 4.2-acre site had been up for sale earlier this year for around €580,000.

Whether anything comes of the plans remains to be seen as there have been repeated attempts to do something with it over the years, including turning it into a hotel.

Elsewhere in the town, properties in Kilrush have appeared on a list of 26 vacant or derelict properties. Clare County Council has 220 active derelict sites files at various stages of progression from a newly opened file to the start of the CPO process.

The number of properties on this list changes frequently. It says this could be for a variety of reasons, including a positive outcome from a site visit, the lodging of a planning application made by the owner, a grant application made for a Vacant Property Grant or the start of works on a site.

There are 13 properties currently on the Vacant Sites Register and 50 properties or sites on the Derelict Sites Register. While at least 15 properties have been removed from the list since the summer of 2021, others have been added following service of required notices.

So far, there has been one property removed from the Vacant Sites Register since July/August 2022. The council has 36 vacant social housing units (or voids), and between July 1, 2021, and May 31, 2023, Clare County Council refurbished and returned to use 153 voids.

Lisdoonvarna

County Clare has been allocated €776,573 in the latest round of funding from the government’s Town and Village Renewal Scheme set up to combat dereliction. Of this, some €100,000 has been allocated to Lisdoonvarna for what is described by the council as a “streetscape enhancement programme”.

While such an initiative is welcome in the home of matchmaking, it is just a small measure of a bigger plan for the town. Two years ago, we highlighted dereliction in the town — of which the freehold title of around 80 acres is held in trust for the community and managed by Lisdoonvarna Fáilte on the community’s behalf.

Among the buildings we featured was the spa that first made the town a Victorian visitor attraction with its healing waters and behind it, Maiville House. The protected listed building had been built to house physicians who were working in the spa wells.

Meanwhile, Lynch’s Hotel on the main square lay vacant and shabby, adding to the impression of a town experiencing something of a slump. Lynch’s is still, in effect, semi-derelict, but it has been given a makeover, and now painted blue.

A considerable amount of work has been done to replace window frames and rotten sections of Maiville House’s roof. Its future is being considered as part of a regeneration plan underway for Lisdoonvarna at the moment, called Lisdoonvarna 2050 Vision.

Supported by the Department of Rural Community, and the Institute of Architects Federation, it is looking at ways to rejuvenate the town. It is currently one of five towns around Ireland that were each awarded €10,000 development funding from the Irish Architecture Foundation’s Reimagine Hometown Architect initiative.

Established to provide a “visionary blueprint” for the towns selected, the lead architect is Lisdoonvarna native and Pritzker Prize-winning architect, Shelley McNamara, brother of the former property tycoon Bernard. Lisdoonvarna-based Ennistymon Area Clare County Council councillor, Joe Garrihy, who is one of the voluntary directors of Lisdoonvarna Fáilte, is one of the people involved in the new plans.

“It may be labelled 2050 but that time soon arrives and we have already started a few years now,” he said. “We have invested more than €1.5m over the last two years regenerating the Pavillion Hall, the community playground, and the 30-acre Community Park.

Lynch’s Hotel is still derelict but what we have done in that and other cases around the town, we would have used Town Enhancement funding to paint and freshen it and other buildings up. 

"The County Council dereliction team are working very hard with a carrot and a stick, with incentives on one hand and putting notices on derelict properties and actively engaging with property owners on the other.

“A number of other houses around the corner have been done up and brought back into use, and up the street, others have been invested in. There is a good bit of action that has happened, relative to the size of the town.”

"If you want to tackle dereliction and vacancy in a town like Lisdoonvarna, you need a vision. We have a vision and where there is a vision as well as the will, there is the way ahead."

Vacancy rates in Clare

There were, according to the GeoDirectory Residential Buildings Report for the second quarter of 2023, 398 new addresses added to the county’s housing stock. There were 348 buildings under construction, and 433 commencements — the stage before construction can start.

The vacancy rate was 5.6%, which was above the 3.9% state-wide average. The report also said the county had 5.1% of the total 21,481 derelict residential buildings, which would amount to 1,095 properties.

In its latest available commercial buildings report, for the fourth quarter of 2022, GeoDirectory reported that Clare had a commercial vacancy rate of 15.5%, up very slightly from the year before.

While Shannon reported the highest vacancy rate at 29.8%, up 5.9% on the year before, the commercial vacancy rate for Kilrush was 24.7%, which was a 1.5% decrease on 2021. According to the 2022 Census, however, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) reported there was an increase in Clare’s housing stock, from 55,779 in 2016 to 58,148.

While the number of vacant dwellings was recorded at the time of the census as having decreased from 6,104 in 2016 to 5,079 in 2022, the number of unoccupied holiday homes was recorded as having increased from 4,821 in 2016 to 4,912 in 2022.

Of the vacant dwellings, 935 were estimated to be rental properties and 428 were understood to be up for sale, at the time of the census. Overall, Co. Clare’s vacancy rate had fallen from 10.9% to 9.2% in 2022.

According to the CSO, Tulla was recorded as having 559 houses and of these, 86 were vacant at the time of the 2022 census, giving a vacancy rate of 15.4%. Lisdoonvarna had 383 houses, of which 86 were recorded as being vacant, giving a vacancy rate of 22.7%, at the time of the census.

However, given the town has since become host to around 800 Ukrainians, the vacancy rate is now likely to be much lower.

According to the CSO, Kilrush urban and rural areas had a total of 1,838 houses, and of these, 252 were considered to be vacant dwellings at the time of the census. Most, 221, are in the town itself, which had a 14.7% vacancy rate at the time.