Skip to main content

Housing Nightmare...

'The estate is shabby now. I don't know how they'll sell anything'

Unfinished roads, stalled sewerage systems and dangerous empty houses: welcome to a housing nightmare...


CIARÁN DOYLE lives in a well-designed, highly insulated, nicely finished three-bed house which he describes as “perfect”, yet everyone in town refers to where he lives as “the building site”.

Rinuccini, incongruously named after a 17th-century Italian cardinal, is just one of several unfinished estates which encircle Portlaoise town but, on first sight, it’s the worst. Four storeys of bare grey concrete criss-crossed with rusting scaffolding, intended to house up to 70 apartments, fronts straight onto the Dublin Road.

“The apartments are a holy show. Because we’re on the Dublin Road, it’s one of the first things that hits you coming in and it looks shocking bad for the town. I’ll never understand why they didn’t start building at the road first and work in.”

Ciarán has plenty of opportunity to ponder the question, as he has to pass the strip of unfinished apartments to get to his house near the back of the estate. His house is fully finished inside, with a high standard of workmanship. Outside, however, there are problems.

“The house is perfect. It’s an awful shame they didn’t do the same with the rest of the place. There is no lighting anywhere in the estate. They put up the posts, but they’re not wired in. There’s no green space, absolutely nowhere for kids to play, so they go climbing the scaffolding.”

The unfinished apartments and houses are an obvious safety risk. Ladders have been left leaning against the scaffolding, making it even easier for small children to climb up to the higher floors where there are unboarded window spaces and unrailed balcony platforms.

“There were security guards on it, but they’re gone more than a year now. I’ve called the gardaí a couple of times. There’s not much they can do, but I don’t know who else to call.”

Not knowing who to call in relation to problems in the estate is a persistent problem. Ciarán’s house is ringed by finished but vacant properties that are beginning to manifest the problems of unlived-in houses – peeling paint, burst pipes in winter, overgrown gardens – but no one seems to be in charge.

“Event Horizon, the developers, they’re gone. So who is responsible for the place now? Is it the banks, is it the council? I would like to know if someone is going to make a decision about what to do here.”

His own preference would be for the unfinished blocks to be levelled and turned into a recreational space. “If houses are not completed, the developers or the council or whoever it is should come to an agreement to cut their losses and knock them. The blocks and the timber, if it’s not rotted at this stage, could be reused, and then it could be turned into a green area. I’m not looking for miracles, I know things will never be 100 per cent, I just want the place to stop looking like a building site.”

The Commercial Court in July 2009 ordered that Bank of Ireland was entitled to proceeds of the sale or rental of houses in Rinuccini to cover debts of €22 million owed by Event Horizon Ltd.

On the other side of town on the Mountrath Road is Maryborough Village. It’s less than a mile from the town centre and, on first inspection, is an attractive estate, but move further in and plots of rubble-filled waste ground surrounded by wire fencing begin to appear. The building site atmosphere isn’t helped by the road surface.

“They never put the top surface on the road, so the ramps are too high and, when there’s a heavy spell of rain, the potholes are unmerciful. It’s particularly bad coming out of the estate, the back of the car is creaking at this stage,” a resident who did not wish to be named said.

A mother of two young children, she said she asked the foreman several months ago what they were going to do about the road surface. The answer was nothing. “They said they’re not going to put on the road surface until they’ve built the houses at the end, because the building equipment would damage the new surface, but they’re never going to build them.”

Having paid full price for her house in 2008, it galls her she is living in an unfinished estate waiting for houses that will be sold for a lot less to be built.

“We were sold this house on a false promise of a finished landscaped estate. That’s not what we’ve been living in for the past two years. The estate is gone shabby now, so I don’t know how they think they’re going to sell anything.”

With children aged three and six, she is becoming increasingly concerned about safety. “The barriers to the sites are connected with twisty ties, they get blown over easily. There are pipes sticking up out of the ground. Rusty nails. I wouldn’t even think about letting them out there.”

Developers Graham Builders Ltd in 2008 accounts – the most recent filed with the Companies Registration Office – said there would be no new development work at Maryborough Village until demand for houses returned.

Back on the Dublin Road, a little further out than Rinuccini, in the townland of Rathbrennan is a development without a name. It is unlikely to ever get one. The houses and apartments are just shells, the site frequently floods and structures are already starting to crumble.

There has been no construction onsite in 18 months, and no one will ever live here, Sinn Féin county councillor Brian Stanley said.

“This site in my opinion has to be levelled. I don’t say that lightly. I don’t go in for knocking down things for the sake of it but in this case there is no hope of it being finished. The developer is gone and the council has no means to finish it.”

This is in contrast to Triogue Manor, near the Mountmellick Road. The houses in this estate were completed when the developer folded, but there was no road surface and water, and sewerage infrastructure had yet to be completed.

“The council used the development bond, but also leveraged parts of the site that hadn’t been built on to finish the estate.

“There can be creative solutions to these problems.”


Report by OLIVIA KELLY - Irish Times

Popular posts from this blog

Ireland's Celtic Tiger Excesses...

'Bang twins' may never get to run a business again... POST-boom Ireland is awash with cautionary tales of Celtic Tiger excesses, as a rattle around the carcasses of fallen property developers and entrepreneurs will show. Few can compete with the so-called Bang twins for youth, glamour and tasteful extravagance. Simon and Christian Stokes, the 35-year-old identical twins behind Bang Cafe and exclusive private members club, Residence, saw their entire business go bust with debts of €9m, €3m of which is owed to the tax man. The debt may be in the ha'penny place compared with the eye-watering billions owed by some of their former customers. But their fall has been arguably steeper and more damning than some of the country's richest tycoons. Last week, further humiliation was heaped on them with revelations that even as their businesses were going under, the twins spent €146,000 of company money in 18 months on designer shopping sprees, five star holidays and sumptu

I fear a very different kind of property crash

While 80% of people over 40 own their own home just a third of adults under 40 do. This is disastrous for social solidarity and cohesion Changing this system of policymaking requires a government to act in a way that may be uncomfortable for some. Governments have a horizon of no more than five years, and the housing issue requires long-term planning. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform was intended to tackle some of these problems. According to its website its remit is to “drive the delivery of better public services, living standards and infrastructure for the people of Ireland by enhancing governance, building capacity and delivering effectively”. So how is the challenge of delivering homes for people in 2024 and beyond going to be met? The extent of the problem is visible in the move by companies, including Ryanair, to buy properties to house staff. Ryanair has, justifiably, defended its right to do so. IPAV has long articulated its views on how to improve supply an

Property Tycoon's Dolce Vita Ends...

Tycoon's dolce vita ends as art seized... THE Dublin city sheriff has seized an art collection and other valuables from the Ailesbury Road home of fallen property developer Bernard McNamara. The collection will be sold to help pay his debts. The sheriff, Brendan Walsh, is believed to have moved against the property developer within the past fortnight, calling to his salubrious Dublin 4 home acting on a court order to seize anything of value from his home to reimburse his creditors. The sheriff is believed to have taken paintings from the family home along with a small number of other items. The development marks a new low for Mr McNamara, once one of Ireland's richest men but who now owes €1.5bn . The property developer and former county councillor from Clare turned the building firm founded by his father Michael into one of the biggest in Ireland. He is the highest-profile former tycoon to date to be targeted by bailiffs, signalling just how far some of Ireland's billionai