‘I’ll go to jail before I pay property tax’

THE houses at Longfield Park are “fabulous”, according to at least one resident.

It’s what’s outside them that’s caused so much heartache. Of about 30 houses completed at the estate in the village of Boherlahan, about 8km from Cashel, only eight are occupied.

Seán Kennedy and his wife Marcella bought their house in Boherlahan in 2009, about two years after the development got under way under the aegis of a group of developers from Cork.

“Nobody can seem to get in touch with them,” Mr Kennedy says now about that company.

Back in 2009, it all seemed so different. “We were under the impression that things were going well, sales-wise, they were looking good to sell a lot of the houses. But since we moved in, maybe two other people have moved in.”

Most of the empty houses are finished, but the exterior of the estate leaves much to be desired. Recently, there were even squatters in one of the unoccupied houses, leaving after a couple of days but not before causing damage.

Seán and his wife Marcella live in a two-storey, three-bedroom house which includes a sun room, and a converted attic.

“We paid €210,000 for it and I know some people paid more than that,” Seán recalls. Today, the house is worth about half of that. “We’d live here for the rest of our lives, it’s lovely, but we’d like people to finish it.

“Even if they put on street lights it would be something. The best way to describe Longfield Park is as a building site,” says Seán.

The site compound, once the base of the construction workers, is still in place while a piece of wasteland has everything from dirty skips to rubble.

“The houses are fabulous but when you’re looking out your front window and back window at that every day, it’s depressing. All of the current residents refused to pay the initial household charge and were then convinced Longfield Park would be one of the “unfinished developments” exempted from the property tax.”

Instead, it seems, they were left off the list by mistake and, as things stand, are liable for the new tax. Local independent TD Mattie McGrath has taken up their cause in the Dáil but whether or not they get the taxation listing changed is up in the air.

Either way, Seán is adamant the Government won’t be getting their hands on any tax relating to their property while the development is in its current state. “I’ll do my few days in Limerick [prison] before I pay it.”