Rory Hearne: Vacant homes present an opportunity we are ignoring

The bringing into use of a huge stock of vacant and derelict buildings is of no interest to investors or developers, and therefore is not given a real priority in policy, writes Rory Hearne

The back of 60 and 61 Shandon Street in Cork city which are on the Derelict Sites Register. Local authorities are not using the Derelict Sites Act 1990 sufficiently, due to a lack of funding, where they can levy owners of derelict sites and property and CPO them rapidly. Photo: Larry Cummins.

“If you tolerate this, then your children will be next”, sang the Manic Street Preachers. It's apt when we consider the way we’ve tolerated the criminal neglect of vacant and derelict properties blighting our country for decades — a subject to which this newspaper recently dedicated a series with important, in-depth analysis. 

Our children are growing up to become adults watching derelict and vacant homes and buildings crumble and decay around them, even as they can’t get a home of their own. Dereliction and vacancy is unacceptable when we face a climate crisis that requires us to embrace sustainable living.