'Nothing has changed' — Moves to tackle dereliction in Tipperary 'could move a lot faster'
Centre Town Picture: Mall Linehan In The Shopping Market Vacant Dan Place Clonmel
Clonmel pharmacist Ronan Quirke did not hold back in his dismay about the state of vacancy and dereliction in the heart of the Tipperary town when he last spoke to the .
That is also how he remembers his appearance in the 2021 series on dereliction, which included a partial focus on the town where his family owned a pharmacy for some 97 years.
Back then, he stood outside the pharmacy and began totting up the vacant and derelict premises along the town's commercial centre.
As he added up buildings around him, his sums quickly passed into double figures in what is the third-largest town in Munster.
“If your colleague back then were to talk to me today, I would say exactly the same thing and see the same boarded up and vacant or derelict shops,” he said.
“I didn’t hold back then and I’m still not holding back.
“The situation in the town is a disgrace.
“Nothing has changed, as far as I can see.
“The development of out-of-town developments has been at the expense of the town centre and the town centre is currently a soulless, uninviting place for retail.
“The fact that the main hotel in the town was allowed to become derelict and be an eyesore and be a social problem has further deteriorated the town centre.”
The hotel he is talking about is the Clonmel Arms Hotel, which has been a blot on the Clonmel streetscape ever since it closed about 17 years ago.
The fact that fires were also lit in the middle of the once-landmark hotel’s main ballroom didn’t do the structure of the building any favours.
As well as its furniture and windows having been smashed and vandalised, floors and ceilings also started to cave in over the years.
The fact that it was also used as a squat compounded things and matters took a tragic turn for the worse when the body of a homeless heroin addict was found there by gardaí on May 3, 2016.
Just weeks previously 43-year-old Christopher Channon, who suffered from mental health problems, had been released from prison.
At the time the Irish Examiner’s focus on Clonmel was published in 2021, there was a planning application to develop the hotel but nothing came of it.
Things, however, might be looking up for the place as it is understood to have been sold recently.
Former Clonmel Mayor, Councillor Pat English, believes this will be a big deal for the town.
“There were plans in 2021 but nothing happened,” he said.
“However, it has just been bought and things will happen now.
“Things will start moving, they really will.
“Things are changing in the town, but it’s just a very slow process.
“I can understand where Ronan [Quirke] is coming from because his part of town has been the worst hit by closures and dereliction.
“Allowing so much retail on the outskirts of the town from around 30 years ago gradually ripped the heart out of the town.”
More than an hour’s drive away and at the other end of the county, there is bad news for anybody hoping something might be done about Nenagh’s former military barracks.
Seen as a potent symbol of decay and dereliction in the town, there had been high hopes it could be sold off, once various legal issues could be resolved.
According to the Department of Defence, which owns the protected structure, those legal issues have now been sorted.
They told the : “Officials in the Department of Defence have successfully completed the outstanding legal matters relating to the property.
They added: “Department officials are available to discuss the matter further with Tipperary County Council as the initial offer to transfer the property to them still stands.” That, however, isn’t going to happen any time soon.
A council spokesperson said: “The former Military Barracks would take substantial resources to make it safe and even more to bring it back into productive use. Tipperary County Council is not in a position to commit any financial resources towards the former Military Barracks site.”
A review of how things are now across the county compared to summer 2021 shows progress is being made. But, if progress over the past two years is anything to go by, they still have a long way to go.
A spokesperson told the : “The Derelict Sites Register alone is not reflective of all the works carried out by the council to tackle derelict sites.
"Tipperary County Council engages with property owners in the first instance, to try to remediate properties, prior to entry on the Derelict Sites Register.
“The council is currently engaging with 83 property owners and in many instances, this engagement results in works being completed and no further formal actions being required under the Derelict Sites Act.
“Since the beginning of 2023, a further 34 Section 8(2) Notices were issued under the Derelict Sites Act. This is the first step in the formal process and advises property owners of the council’s intention to place their property on the Derelict Sites Register.
“Owners are also advised of the works required to render their properties non-derelict and time is given to complete such works. In many cases, properties are remediated at this stage and do not progress to entry on the register.”
When the visited Carrick in 2021, there were roughly a dozen vacant properties on the Main Street, although work was being undertaken on some.
Asked how that work was progressing, Seamus Campbell, manager of the centuries-old Meaney's Shoes, said: “Covid has affected a lot of work.
“But things are slowly starting to happen.
“You regularly see people being shown empty premises on the Main Street and there is a real drive to fill empty premises.
“We all accept that town centres are just no longer going to be the way they were in the old-fashioned sense of having rows and rows of shops alongside each other.
"We have set up a digital hub in the town and are encouraging small one- or two-person operations to move into the town centre.”
He also pointed out that a large derelict site in the town was recently purchased by the council with State funds. Last December, the council bought the derelict 2.7-acre Goldcrop site beside Dillon Bridge at Carrick’s North Quay for an estimated €500,000.
It has been one of the town’s long-standing derelict sites. Around €400,000 of the funds needed to buy what is known locally as the former Wicklow Gardens site came from the Government’s Town and Village Renewal Scheme’s Buildings Acquisitions Measure.
The council recently submitted an application for Government funding to enable it to purchase more property bordering the Goldcrop site.
In June 2021, the council announced it had sourced funds to kickstart €4.2m-plus development plans for the old Kickham Barracks in Clonmel. The sprawling 11-acre site had lain vacant since it closed in 2012.
The work was funded under the First Call of the Urban Regeneration Development Fund (URDF) programme, an initiative of the Department of Housing to help revive rural towns. It is one of the key projects that are part of the council’s 2030 Plan for the Regenerational Transformation of Clonmel Town.
Opened earlier this year, it now boasts an impressive outdoor plaza that is being used to host concerts.
Doubtless Ronan Quirke wishes the council could speed up any plans it has for his neck of the woods 11 minutes walk away on Main Street. When he spoke to the Irish Examiner in 2021, most of the units in the Market Place shopping mall were lying empty.
Between now and then, the vacant shops suffered from vandalism and fires were even started there. Just weeks ago, boarding went up to protect them — further adding to the look of neglect and abandonment to central Clonmel.
But Richie Molloy, the town’s new mayor, says that while it is easy to criticise the council and while he does sympathise with Mr Quirke, things are being done about vacancy and dereliction.
“As with anywhere in Ireland, if you can’t see change on the street you either live or work in, it is easy to say the council or whoever is not doing anything,” he said.
“I agree things could move a lot faster and that is why I will be making dereliction and vacancy a priority of my one year in office.”
An application to buy 550 sqm property was submitted to the Department of Rural and Community Development in April.
Funding is again being sought under the Buildings Acquisitions Measure for the new site, which — if successful — would remove any constraints on the future development of the entire area.
Last word to Seamus Campbell.
“Nothing happens in towns if you just rely on one organisation to do everything,” he said.
“Carrick is an example of what can happen and is happening when you get everybody together from all sections of the community.
“We are not all going to agree with each other all of the time.
“But with so many diverse groups dealing with each other in Carrick to make things happen, we have a very good chance of at least achieving a happy medium.”
According to the GeoDirectory Residential Buildings Report Q2 2023, Tipperary had 5.6% of the country’s 21,134 derelict residential properties. That amounts to 1,183 properties.
Also according to that report, there were 529 news addresses added to the county’s housing stock in the year up to June 2023.
A further 494 buildings were under construction while there were 423 so-called “commencements” — the point where all the necessary paperwork is in place for building to start.
Tipperary County Council had, as of May this year, 49 properties on the Derelict Sites Register, 12 of which went on this year. The figure is a big increase on the 14 properties listed on the council’s Derelict Sites register in September 2021.
The owners of a further 34 properties have been served with warning notices that their property will be put on the register and entered by officials. As the Derelict Sites Act, 1990 states, local authorities can give derelict property owners a period of time to contact the council before officials will enter their property.
The figure of 34 is an increase on 23 in 2021. But council chiefs are dealing with many more derelict properties that are either not yet on the register or the council is actively engaged with the owners.
For example, another 83 derelict property owners are currently in discussions with the council and haven’t got to the issuing of notices stage under Section 8(2) of the act.
That is an increase on the 71 who were engaging with the council in 2021, and has helped lead to 11 properties on the register being removed since July / August 2021. In the period up to then from 2019, eight had been removed.
Of its 5,500 council housing stock, 110 — or 2% — are so-called “voids”. These are council properties in Tipperary, which saw its population increase in the 2022 census to 167,661 from 159,553 in the previous census, that are waiting to be refurbished and re-allocated to somebody else on the housing waiting list.
Some 80 voids were done up between July and December 2021, a further 124 were completed in 2022 and between January and May of this year, 55 have been done up and returned to use.
Just one Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) relating to a derelict property has been issued since July/August 2021 but there are currently five in what the council says are “preparatory progress stages”, up from three in 2021.