Idle land costing Cork County Council millions

Millions of euro worth of land which Cork County Council was “forced to buy” remains idle, or is being let out to farmers from grazing livestock.

According to Fine Gael Cllr Kevin Murphy, much of this land may never be built on and he has predicted the loan repayments will cripple the council.

Cllr Murphy made his comments after acquiring some reports on the issue from council officials.

It appears that most of the land was purchased from 2000-2003, during the boom.

In total the council took out €49.2 million in loans to acquire the land all over the county for social housing, schools, industrial estates and amenity areas.

Of that €21m in loans was later taken over by the Department of Environment, but the council was left with a €28.2m of debts, which Cllr Murphy says is crippling it.

“Councils were forced by the department to buy landbanks for development, but then the recession struck. We bought the land when it was very expensive and now we have a huge landbank and there’s no doubt that a lot of it will never be built on,” he said.

“The council acted in good faith and the department should take over the outstanding debt as well.”

According to council officials they have entered into a five-year agreement with their banks to pay off only the interest on the loan, which will cost €1.077m this year.

Cllr Murphy said this money could be spent elsewhere on essential services.

“What worries me is that when our loans are restructured in five years’ time we will have to start paying back the principal sum on the loan. That will be very substantial and it will have a huge effect on our ability to deliver services going forward,” Cllr Murphy said.

Officials said they are hoping a lot of the land will one day be transferred to the National Housing Agency.

In the meantime, most of the landbank remains idle, although some has been let out for grazing.

It didn’t detail in the report how much the council was making from this, although Cllr Murphy said it was “certainly peanuts” compared to the amount the council owed the banks.

The councillor said the department must take over the loan repayments because if the council tried to sell off the land at present it wouldn’t get anything near what it paid for it.

“We need to do something about housing as well. We have seen our housing stock depleted in the last five to seven years and we are not building houses. Yet we are awash with land,” Cllr Murphy said.

From a table provided by County Council officials it appears the local authority possesses more than 1,700 acres of land which hasn’t been utilised to date.

It’s biggest acquisitions in recent years have been 341.5 acres at Bottlehill, a few kilometres the north of Cork City. It was to be used as a major landfill but was mothballed and plans are in place to turn it into an eco-energy park featuring wind turbines and anaerobic digesters, which turn waste food into heat and electricity.

The council also purchased nearly 70 acres at Broomfield, Midleton, and 70 acres at Carrigtwohill for industrial development.