Cork council decision to waive third of derelict site levy on former Magdalene laundry 'a disgrace'

Owners of Good Shepherd convent site in Sunday’s Well had accrued €823,943 in outstanding levies but Cork City Council accepted payment of €500,000

The former Good Shepherd convent site in Sunday’s Well has been on the city’s derelict sites register since August 2019. Picture: Larry Cummins

A decision by Cork City Council to waive more than a third of €800,000 in derelict site levies on a former Magdalene laundry has been slammed as “a disgrace”.

The former Good Shepherd convent site in Sunday’s Well has been on the city’s derelict sites register since August 2019, and by December 31, 2025, its owners, Dundalk-based Moneda Developments, had accrued €823,943 in outstanding levies.

Cork City Council has confirmed it has accepted from Moneda a payment of €500,000, waiving the €323,943 balance.

The half-million payment on a single site in the first quarter of 2026 contrasts with the council’s total receipt of derelict levies in 2025, when it received €406,181 against the city’s 158 derelict sites.

Sinn Féin TD for Cork North Central Thomas Gould said he believed the decision to write off more than €300,000 is “in breach of the Derelict Sites Act”.

Citing a parliamentary reply he received in 2021 from then junior housing minister Peter Burke, Mr Gould said local authorities did not have the power to waive derelict site levies.

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing told the Irish Examiner the only circumstances in which the derelict sites levy may be waived is under section 26 the Derelict Sites Act 1990.

That provision states that where, “in the opinion of a local authority, payment (would) cause undue hardship to the person, the local authority may suspend action (to) secure payment of the whole or part of the amount of the levy”.

The spokesperson added: “The waiving of the derelict sites levy under section 26 of the act is at the discretion of the local authority concerned and the department does not have information on value of any waivers applied”.

Mr Gould said he believed exemptions applied to individuals rather than companies.

There will be huge anger when people find out a company can owe €800,000 and only pay €500,000, leaving €323,943 in unpaid levies, at a time when the ordinary man or the woman in the street cannot negotiate to only pay two-thirds of their local property tax.

“To me, it’s a disgrace, Cork City Council could repair a hundred boarded-up houses with that €323,943.” 

Valued at €1.85m in March 2024, the former convent site changed hands earlier this month when it was purchased for an undisclosed sum by Bellmount Good Shepherd, a company owned by property developer bothers Pádraig and Seamus Kelleher.

That sale went through after An Coimisiún Pleanála last November granted planning permission for a 957-bed apartment complex on the site, the city’s largest ever student accommodation development.

Bellmount said it had recently acquired the property, subject to planning, “with all outstanding liabilities to the local authority settled in full by the previous owners”. Repeated efforts to contact Moneda have proven unsuccessful.

A Cork City Council spokesperson said the former Good Shepherd site remained on the derelict sites register, with fresh levies accruing to Bellmount until dereliction is removed.

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Last week, in an unrelated case, Westmeath County Council was criticised for waiving €85,800 in levies against a derelict Mullingar site.

Under the new Derelict Property Tax, announced in Budget 2026, the Revenue Commissioners will soon have direct enforcement powers over the imposition of dereliction penalties.