2024 the year of the CPO as Council harden stance to tackle derelict buildings in Sligo
Martin Lydon Michael Daly
THE Chief Executive of Sligo County Council has confirmed 2024 will see the local authority using the Compulsory Purchase (CPO) system to tackle dereliction in Sligo town and county.
Martin Lydon, in a wide-ranging interview with the Sligo Weekender said, “the CPOs are coming”.
Clearly determined to deal with Sligo’s blight of derelict buildings, he underlined that this year would see a major move on tackling the very large number of derelict properties in Sligo town and beyond.
He told the Weekender: “Actions speak louder than words and if you say you are going to do something you have to honour that. We said we were going down the CPO route, we have specific plans now in hand and they will be initiated in 2024.”
He added: “CPOs are coming. It is significant because we have not really used the CPO system to tackle dereliction before. We have used the Compulsory Purchase Order mechanism to deliver roads, but now we are showing we are serious about dereliction. We have a team to deliver on this and to tackle the issue which we acknowledge needs to be dealt with.”
Mr Lydon also confirmed that Sligo County Council would be delivering significant numbers of new homes over the next two years, but accepted that Sligo’s housing shortage could only be tackled properly in tandem with the private sector also building houses:
“The housing situation is very difficult nationally and locally but looking only at it in a local Sligo context, we have a housing delivery action plan.
“The original proposal was to deliver 621 houses, but we now believe we can deliver 686 in a time frame up to 2026.
“But then there’s also the private market and we really do need private housing firms to build within
Sligo. If we want to attract companies, we need private housing; if we want to ensure the hospital is
An image depicting what the Eastern Garavogue Bridge project will look like upon completion. 2025.”
functioning properly with staff able to secure housing and we want lecturers at ATU to be able to live here, so we need housing. While the N17 road project, from
“However, our role is to provide the Knock to Collooney has been stalled, policies and the processes, but after Mr Lydon was adamant that it was that we have to wait for the private “not dead”, anything but. sector to step in. There has been an Asked where the N17 project is at - is increase in prices and in costs, so it is it on hold or is it dead - he replied: “It’s difficult for the private sector, I accept not dead. What we are waiting for now that.” is a political decision in relation to the
In their own right, Sligo County future of the N17 project.
Council has a major house building “We have discussed this in the initiative underway with 114 houses Council Chamber, but we do need now delivered in 2023. More are planned. to come down one way or another in “We are also working with the relation to the project because some of Department on modern methods of these people have had their land ‘sterilised’ construction which we think will for nearly 30 years, so we do need speed up the time in which these a decision to be made on the N17, are houses can be built - Ballymote is we moving with this or not. one of the areas we are looking at, “I would be pretty hopeful that we we have house building in would move forward with this because Tubbercurry and more I think it is a really important piece of in Dromore West. physical infrastructure.”
We are looking Asked why he thought this, he said: across the “Because Sligo has been identified as county, places a Regional Growth Centre and if you like Grange want to be a Regional Growth Centre, where we have attracting industry, which then land. attracts jobs, which then improves
“House communities you need the infrastructure. building will As a region termed ‘lagging’ take place, by the EU, we need to have balanced but there is a regional development to allow us to big pipeline deliver the Regional Growth Centre.” for 2024, but The Chief Executive repeated his you may not belief that the N17 project must happen: see the results “I absolutely believe that this project of that until should happen. We met Mr Ryan
in July 2023, and we made it very clear, it is a project that needs to happen because if we don’t have connectivity, we are going to continue to struggle to attract investment into the region. We must have that route.”
Asked did he have a meltdown when he heard what Environment Minister Eamonn Ryan had to say in July 2023 during a visit to Sligo when he delivered his opinion on the N17 Project, Mr Lydon said he didn’t, adding: “In terms of my reaction I took the view that you need to think about things and focus on the exact words Minister Ryan had to say. What he said was: ‘The project is not progressing at this moment in time, but it wasn’t removed from the National Development Plan, so I hung on to the fact it is not removed from the National Development Plan.”
Whatever about the delay on the N17 project, Mr Lydon was certain that the Eastern Garavogue Bridge Project would begin this year: “We have consultants working on it and the hope is that we will be out to tender at the end of this year.
“This is a major project. The original budget was €20 million before we had the inflation costs of recent years, so you might have a project now that will cost closer to €30 million.”
He agreed that some people had wrongly perceived the Eastern Garavogue Bridge project to be another way to ‘get through Sligo’.
He said: “I would describe it as an ‘Active Travel’ project and what I mean by that is that it will have a cycle lane on it, a pedestrian crossing, a speed limit of between 30 to 50 kilometres per hour and it will be a project that will allow people to use facilities in Sligo without having to go through the middle of Sligo town.
“The ATU and the hospital will be beneficiaries, but the most important beneficiaries will be the citizens of Sligo because it will not be designed for trucks, we already have the N4.”
Appointed Chief Executive in 2021, Mr Lydon said he had hoped to be further along the road in terms of what he set out to achieve as CE when he came into that role in August of 2021: “To be honest I would have liked to have achieved more by this stage. I suppose what delayed things at the beginning was the fact there were things that needed to be done internally.
“Externally people would not have understood or known about what needed to be done. We had a lot of work people couldn’t see that had to be addressed.
“We had 130 temporary and acting posts when I took over and that has been reduced to between 20 and 30. We have created new posts, a tourism officer and a festival events officer, we have new teams dealing with our digital transformation process within the organisation as we look to meet Government targets in relation to that. We now have an assets and facilities team, and they are leading out on the Harbour Masterplan.
“We can talk about dereliction, we have to tackle our own dereliction, for example we are looking at Governor’s House for example and we are looking to bring that back into use after ten years. They are the teams we have had to bring into place, as well as the larger scale projects which I hope everyone knows about, such as the Eastern Garavogue Bridge, the N17 project and moving out on public realm projects.”
Repeating a phrase he used in his executive summary for the 20024 Sligo Budget, Mr Lydon said these are “exciting times” for Sligo with the imminent opening of the massive new Queen Maeve Square earmarked for May with a major festival of events built around that opening and a new outdoor performance space also coming on stream at Cleveragh and a whole host of other projects that will enhance Sligo town and county.
He added: “There are many major plans and projects, yes there are issues, but I believe that we have turned a corner in terms of our finances and there is much to look forward and plenty to do to enhance Sligo as a place to live in, invest in and visit.”