Bulldozers move in to knock ghost estate
IN an historic move, Cork County Council is to demolish 10 ‘dangerous’ houses in an unfinished estate in Lismire.
Last Friday morning at the Kanturk Mallow municipal district meeting, the bulldozers were on site to take down the unfinished estate at Lios Na Greine in Lismire.
For many years, CCC has been trying to get banks to pay out insurance bonds to finish off estates which were left unfinished by developers.
John Aherne, estates manager at CCC was in particular singled out by councillors for his Trojan work in pursuit of the bondholders and negotiating murky legal waters to getting all stakeholders around the table for discussions.
Regarding, Lios Na Greine, Mr Aherne told the meeting that that the site resolution plan concession was agreed on by all parties involved, which took major work.
He said the gable walls of two houses had fallen down and were dangerous and the stakeholders involved agreed to the demolition. He stressed when asked by councillors that there will be “zero cost” to CCC for demolition.
He said all parties agreed on the SRP and that an undeveloped site be made safe. He also pointed out that health and safety issues were of huge concern. However, there was still one hurdle to jump at the Lios Na Greine estate in that Bank of Ireland still owned one of the houses in the unfinished section.
He said the house was repossessed and he has spoken to its original owner who would be happy at this stage to have it knocked to the ground. Mr Ahern said he still isn’t able to get an agreement with BOI to demolish the house. It’s understood that house had been broken into along with suffering from an arson attack. It was his firm view that it too should be knocked and he was of the view that a letter by the councillors to BOI would help with matters.
“Everything imaginable which could have gone wrong with building a housing estate did go wrong here (at Lios Na Greine)– from the planning, construction to the bond received which totalled €1.6 million for the entire estate. It was all just unbelievable stuff. This project was for a place like Cork City not Lismire, ” he said. He said Liberty Insurance would be paying for the knocking of the houses.
“I must say Liberty Insurance has come up trumps in all of this. They really need to be praised and they were a pleasure to deal with. I built up a good solid reputation with them,” he said.
Mr Aherne described the SRP as being akin to half way between planning permission and retention.
Chairing the meeting, Cllr Bernard Moynihan (FF) said an immediate letter must be written to the CEO of BOI requesting that the house be knocked to ground.
Cllr Melissa Mullane (SF) asked what lessons has CCC learnt. “This is not just a local issue but a national issue. Residents have suffered and we need to tighten up our planning and our bonds.”
Cllr Gerard Murphy (FG) said it would be very difficult to put into words the amount of work which in particular Mr Aherne has undertaken in tackling this huge problem to get a bank to release bond money.
Cllr Timmy Collins (Ind) told The Corkman that he has been dealing with residents for many years with regards to the estate. He described the estate as being “a complete disaster from start to finish.” He also pointed out that there was a huge problem with sewerage which the council had to sort out, but there was still work to be done, he said. In the estate, there was no fencing around the unfinished site along with open visible open manholes and recently two gable walls fell down.