‘A disaster from the word go’

WHEN Ray Murphy looks out the window of his home every morning, he can see a shell of an unfinished house which was set on fire a couple of years ago.

Junk, old pipes and other assorted rubbish are also within sight for Ray and his neighbours who all moved into what should have been an idyllic development in picturesque Lismore in the last five or six years.

The Mills is about three minutes’ walk from the centre of the heritage town and comprises about 40 houses, finished and unfinished, and has been described as “a disaster from the word go” by resident Ray Murphy.

One of the worst aspects of the development is the health and safety situation, according to Mr Murphy, with unfinished roads, junk in an area that has been left to rot and even the possibility of rats turning up in a residential area with children.

Meanwhile, the state of the “roads” within the development is also a worry, with shores not flush with the rest of the surface along with uneven kerbs.

“If kids go out around here on bikes and these shores are raised, it’s only going to take one child to come off their bike for something awful to happen. Most of the footpaths are too high and the cars are coming off them. There’s lots of young families here and the people are lovely, with a nice mixture of older and retired people as well.”

Two unfinished houses, little more than shells, are the focus of particular concern for those who live in the occupied section of The Mills and their fears were realised a couple of years ago when one of those houses was set on fire.

Those fire hazard buildings are among about 10 or 12 unfinished houses on the development.

“The top priority is to seal the estate off,” Mr Murphy says. “All that area where the junk and rubbish is, with everything just thrown around the place — we need that area walled off and railed off, levelled and grassed.”

The word was that the county council put out a contract for the completion of the estate to tender, with work supposed to begin last Jan 1 but, so far, “there’s no sign of anything happening... everything goes on the long finger”.

The Mills is on the list of developments exempted from the new property tax but even that’s causing confusion among residents, with some receiving letters putting a value on their houses for taxation purposes. Now they’re in the process of trying to clarify the matter.

But, ultimately, their main goal is to see the work done which would make their development safe, clean and with a “finished” label.

“The sad thing is, it’s not going to take an awful lot to fix it,” Ray Murphy says with a sigh. “The people here are looking after their own homes, there’s a nice community here. All we need is to finish it off and tidy the whole thing.”