Confusion over estates exempted from tax

Six housing estates have been included in the list of properties exempted from the property tax despite never featuring in any official government list of unfinished developments.

All are located within the administrative area of Cork County Council with the exception of one development in Kildare.

The five developments in Cork which never featured on any previous list of ghost estates are: Brook Hill, Balea Rd, Carrigaline; Earls Well, Waterfall; Hill Farm, Model Farm Rd, Carrigrohane; Kilmoney Woods, Kilmoney, Carrigaline; and Mansfield House, Pembroke, Passage West.

None of the estates were eligible for the waiver for the €100 household charge in early 2012.

A Department of the Environment source has admitted that exempting developments which had never previously been included in lists of problematic estates, from the local property tax was “unusual”.

The inclusion of such estates is likely to increase the possibility that residents in some other ghost estates might seek to legally challenge their exclusion from the tax exemption list.

A spokesman for Phil Hogan, the environment minister, said the department was heavily reliant on the opinion of local authorities as to which housing estates would be exempt from the controversial tax.

He claimed department officials would have carried out spot checks on such developments to ensure they were still meeting criteria to be eligible for exemption.

However, he could not say if the inclusion of the five developments in Cork had been queried with Cork County Council.

Sean Sherlock, a junior minister, has acknowledged that the Government made “a mess” of how it dealt with the decision to exempt unfinished developments from the tax.

Cork County Council said exemptions were not limited to developments on the 2012 list but failed to explain how the five estates were not identified as being problematic in previous surveys.

Almost half of the 71 developments within the council’s administrative area which have been exempted from the property tax were not granted a waiver for the household charge in 2012.

A small housing estate in Timolin, Co Kildare, was the only other development of 421 estates across the country exempted from the tax which hadn’t featured in any previous housing list.

A housing estate in Tipperary — Cois na hAbhainn in Mullinahone — was also exempted from the property tax, despite being deemed in the 2012 survey as complete and no longer problematic.

A spokesperson for Tipperary South County Council said the 25-unit estate, which is practically fully occupied, still suffered from serious problems with its wastewater facilities.

Local authorities were asked in February to either confirm or update the list of such unfinished developments in their area.

The 2012 survey identified 1,203 housing estates where development had substantially been completed or never begun, leaving 1,770 developments which remained problematic.