50% of Dingle houses are lying empty, council hears

MORE than half of the residential properties in the tourist haven of Dingle are unoccupied, it was claimed yesterday.

And the Co Kerry peninsula town has such a surplus of holiday homes that some housing estates are unoccupied or uncompleted.

The disclosures came yesterday as council officials proposed the dezoning of several hundred of acres of land in the town due to the collapse of the construction industry.

Zoning of land for housing and development in the Dingle area often took place at the behest of councillors.

However, a executive staff have now started a process to dezone 261 acres, including 144 acres in and around Dingle town, Kerry County Council’s director of planning services Michael McMahon yesterday told county councillor Michael O’Shea.

Since September 2009, 5,189 acres in Co Kerry (excluding the urban areas of Tralee, Killarney and Listowel) were zoned residential, with only 25% of that land being serviced for development.

According to Department of Environment statistics, Kerry councillors zoned enough land for 61,269 housing units — about six times more than what was needed for its anticipated population.

The issue arose at yesterday’s meeting of the council in Tralee where a draft functional area plan 2012-2018 was put forward for Dingle and Gaeltacht areas to the west of the town.

The plan quoted from CSO 2006 statistics which showed 18% of all private households in Dingle were built after 2001.

Residential development had occurred in an uncoordinated manner, leaving large tracts of undeveloped land between new estates and the town centre, the draft plan said.

“This has resulted in the creation of a scattered, disjoined development pattern and has created a car-dependant population,” it stated.

Future residential zonings will only be considered on infill land, brown-field sites, or on lands close to existing residential areas. This is “to avoid further leapfrogging of development” and to ensure the growth of a compact urban form, according to the draft plan. It pointed to a surplus of houses and holiday homes in Dingle, with a number of estates being abandoned, unoccupied or uncompleted. FG councillor Seamus Cosai Fitzgerald said 50% of houses in Dingle were empty.