Will it take a tragedy to get estates fixed?

For two years, Seamus Boland of Irish Rural Link was like a broken record.

Stop bickering about whether the estates should be razed or used to wipe out the country’s 100,000-strong local authority waiting list. Forget about demonising developers who created this mess. Forget about chasing developers to fund the cleaning up of these estates.

The number one priority, he said, was to make these “deathtraps” safe.

This week’s tragedy is the nightmare he long foresaw.

The Department of the Environment visited the site in August and lodged enforcement proceedings against the developer. By December, Athway Construction had lodged a new planning application to finish the estate as the original five-year permission had run out.

Then this happens.

A little boy, following his puppy, made his way through the exterior fence and into the estate. There, he drowned near a drainage system.

Liam’s final minutes don’t bear thinking about — and what really galls is that his death was wholly preventable.

Locally, there is sympathy for the developers, Tony Diskin of Diskin Enterprises and Athway Construction, with many locals reporting that the exterior fence had been fixed and the site cleaned up by the builder.

However, with its 13 vacant homes, the site was a magnet for antisocial behaviour. Therefore the fence was repeatedly broken, before it had to be fixed all over again.

But the question on everyone’s lips now is whether it will take the death of a child for these estates to be fixed up — especially the sites where the original developers are no longer trading.

Questions need to be asked about safety at estates where, unlike at Glenatore, the developer is no longer responsible.

How often are they inspected? Are they all inspected? What action is taken if the site is not kept up to sufficient standard?

The frequency of inspections needs to rise sharply so the public can be assured they will never have to read about a Liam Keogh again.

Mr Boland says the tragedy underlines how the issue of the estates has not gone away and will pose a serious safety risk until they are finally finished or bulldozed.

“Up to €2.5m has been made available to make sites safe where the developer is no longer in the picture. That is a very small sum but you have to ask questions about the low take-up,” he says.

Westmeath County Council has only drawn down €30,000 to make these unfinished building sites safe. Out of the available €2.5m, just €1.4m has been drawn down to date.

“Local authorities need to start taking safety on these sites very seriously,” said Mr Boland.

“There is a role, too, for residents associations and nearby neighbours whereby if any further damage is done to the site, they must inform the developer or the local authority so that all necessary works are completed immediately.

“Remember, we are just months away from the summer holidays, which is a high-risk time for such awful incidents.”