Mr. Eddie Taaffe:

I thank the Deputy. Dereliction is exceptionally complex. Let us separate it into two categories. One is where there is an owner who can be clearly identified. In those cases, owners might not have the funding to do anything with derelict sites or, for a myriad of reasons, might want the property but just do not have the wherewithal to develop it. It is about incentivising such owners to develop or sell those properties. That is the first issue. They are relatively more straightforward to deal with in that you can talk to somebody who owns that property, work with that person and try to point him or her in the right direction of getting the dereliction dealt with.

The more complex cases are those where there is no owner, or there is a dispute over ownership, or the property is in the ownership of a company that has long ceased to trade or exist. The issue there is not the legislation. The legislation gives us the power to serve notice, impose levies and, ultimately, to CPO those properties. In many cases, the issue is these properties require a huge amount of work to render them un-derelict, or to demolish them or whatever. For example, we had a case in Wexford where a number of properties were derelict and dangerous. In fact, one of them collapsed. We had to do emergency works. We expended in the order of €250,000 to make them safe and to demolish them. We then put them back on the open market, where they were valued at €50,000.

Local authorities have to be very careful when they get into this because they could end up with a huge financial burden on the public purse. That is why we tread carefully on these. The idea is not to make money on them but to render them un-derelict. That is where the complexity and risk comes for a local authority. To be fair to the Department, call 3 for the urban regeneration development fund was specifically targeted at dereliction. That has been a game-changer for us in that we have compulsorily purchased quite a number of properties and got them back onto the market. More funding and focus on that may be required. If we had the funding to do that, get involved in that and take the risk out of it, that is how we will make a difference on dereliction.