Developers will be made finish off ghost estates

DEVELOPERS will be forced to finish and clean up ghost estates after a survey found more than 100,000 dwellings are lying empty, incomplete or were planned but never built.

As the extent of the problem was revealed for the first time, it has also emerged that boom-time builders did not leave cash bonds to finish off many of the 2,800 estates littered around the country.

Planning Minister Ciarán Cuffe also admitted a previous government policy of tax breaks to boost development during the boom had been “naive”.