THE ANNOUNCEMENT that €5 million is being allocated to rectify the most serious safety hazards on unfinished housing estates may be seen by cynics as an attempt to buy votes. But there can be no doubt that this relatively small sum of public money is needed to begin dealing with the most pressing problems on nearly 350 estates where some houses are occupied and many left unfinished as builders abandoned the sites.
Piles of rubble, open pits, uncovered manholes and unstable structures are among the hazards to be addressed by local authorities, which will then seek to recoup this emergency expenditure from missing developers or by securing a lien on the future sale of houses.
Outgoing Minister of State for Housing Michael Finneran said he was providing the money – which works out at just over €14,000 per afflicted estate – because he felt a “moral responsibility” to residents of ghost estates. And well he might. The reason why many of these estates exist is due entirely to the property bubble and the frenzy of construction it fuelled, thanks to a government that was living on its ill-gotten gains. Indeed, it bears a direct responsibility for the proliferation of unfinished estates in Leitrim, Longford, west Cavan, north Roscommon and south Sligo – all of which were covered by tax incentives under the entirely indiscriminate Upper Shannon Rural Renewal Scheme, introduced by Charlie McCreevy in 1998.
Various estimates have been made in recent years about the extent of the ghost estates phenomenon. The estimate made last October by the Department of the Environment, following a county-by-county survey, was that there were 2,800 in this unfortunate category, involving a total of 23,000 completed but unoccupied houses or apartments, and a further 20,000 at various stages of construction, including many in the very early stages. Other estimates have put the overall level of housing vacancy much higher, but it is clear from the set of figures produced by the department that thousands of people are caught in the bind of living in what are, in effect, abandoned building sites – with all the risks that they entail, particularly for children.
What makes the residents doubly aggravated by their plight is that so many are now living with negative equity as well as a dispiriting, even dangerous, environment. The €5 million in emergency funding being provided is a tiny first tranche of the much larger sums the next government will need to banish Ireland’s ghost estates.