Derelict Cork campaigners say 78% of properties still vacant

Couple claim just 7.6% of the properties they surveyed three years ago are now 'back in use as either homes or businesses'

Frank O'Connor and Jude Sherry photographed 460 vacant and derelict buildings within 2km of Cork city centre.  Picture: Dan Linehan

A couple who run awareness-raising project Derelict Cork claim that 78% of the hundreds of properties they posted photographs of on Twitter in 2020 are still vacant.

Architects and campaigners Frank O’Connor and Jude Sherry shared photographs every day from June 2020 for a year, counting 460 vacant and derelict buildings located within a 2km radius of Cork city centre. The photographed buildings were shown in varying states of decay.

Looking back over their initiative, they said just 7.6% of the properties they surveyed three years ago are now “back in use as either homes or businesses”.

Some 2.9% have been brought back into “a usable state but are currently vacant [fully or partially]”, while 11.5% are “under active construction” as refurbishments or new builds.

Commenting on their finding that 11% of the 460 derelict buildings they identified have been demolished in the past three years, they said: “The most sustainable building is the existing one.

This loss of embodied carbon, along with the loss of our unique heritage materials and streetscape, is rarely justified.

The couple said, at the current rate of redevelopment, it will take 40 years to bring all 460 properties back into use.

A similar time scale was provided in 2012 when a Deutsche Bank report concluded Ireland had so many empty houses that it would take up to 43 years to fill them all.

A host of local groups and social media campaigns have been set up nationwide since the Derelict Cork campaign began.

Empty council properties

Cork City Council, in response to questions from the Irish Examiner  earlier this month, said it has brought back into use 404 empty council properties or so-called “voids” since July 2021.

As well as bringing back into use council properties that were uninhabitable, a spokesperson also said 19 properties that were on the vacant sites register in July 2021 are no longer registered.

Cork City Council has also initiated 10 notices of intention to acquire compulsorily since July 2021.

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Just last week, the council announced its move to acquire two long-term adjoining derelict properties in the heart of the city. 

The authority has published public notices signalling its intent to exercise its powers under the Derelict Sites Act 1990, to acquire compulsorily the properties at 23 and 24 Lower John St. The three-storey properties have been boarded up for some time and subjected to extensive graffiti. 

Both have been on the city’s derelict sites register since December 2017.

The council currently has 116 properties on its derelict sites list and 10 on its vacant sites list.

Among projects initiated in the past year is work to build a 265-home scheme at the former St Kevin’s Hospital lands in Cork city.