Councillors angry at Dunnes’ empty store

THE Irish owned supermarket giant Dunnes Stores has come in for criticism for leaving its Park Street shop premises lying idle.

Speaking at the monthly meeting of the Municipal District of Dundalk, Cllr John McGahon described the loophole which allows big corporations to leave property lying idle as ‘a bit of a joke’.

He complained that companies can say that they are putting a building up for sale and sit on the property without doing anything to it.

He accused Dunnes of ‘sitting on a prime property in the centre of Dundalk.’

‘It’s two fingers to everyone here and the people of Dundalk.’

Director of Service Mr Frank Pentony said he didn’t disagree with Cllr McGahon’s sentiments. He said that the council ‘ tried to go after them as a derelict site, they put posters in the window and cleaned the footpath so it’s not a derelict site.’

Earlier Cllr Mark Dearey asked what action the council was taking regarding vacant sites. He said it appeared that there was nothing listed on the vacant site registry. He recalled that they had scrambled desperately to get a budget passed before Christmas and he would have thought that it would have been advantageous for the local authority to make a registry of empty sites and impose a levy on them.

Director of Service Mr Frank Pentony said that very few of the sites in Louth qualified under the legislation. The amount which they get from the derelict sites levy is ‘very, very small’ and it was one thing to impose a levy but another thing to collect them. Sites which were put up for sale were also exempt, he said.

He added that a lack of resources had hampered the council from drawing up a list of vacant sites and he appealed to any councillors who were aware of such sites to notify the officials. The sites had to be zoned for housing.