Over 100 vacant properties found in just TWO Laois towns

Two Laois towns that have suffered more than their fair share of dereliction, have been found to have over 110 vacant properties that could be used as future housing.

Mountmellick and Mountrath, with populations of 4,000 and 1,800 each, were the first two in the county to be chosen for a new vacancy survey carried out by Laois County Council in 2022.

The council's Director of Services for Housing is Angela McEvoy.

She said that of the 95 properties initially identified as being vacant in Mountmellick, it has been whittled down to 63, after some were found to be occupied.

Grants are being sought for some others by owners to do them up, under the Repair and Leasing or Croi Conaithe funds. Others have been sold or were put up for sale since the survey was done.

In Mountrath, of the 69 vacant properties identified as potentially vacant, some 50 are confirmed to be so.

"These were two areas where vacancy was visible. That is not to say they are the only two areas we are looking at," she said.

Some of the properties are now to be subject to Compulsory Purchase Orders by Laois County Council, forcing the owners to sell them so they can be renovated by the council for social housing.

However the council is using CPOs as a last resort. 

"Efforts are ongoing to contact the owners of residential properties identified as being vacant in the surveys. Where ownership cannot be established, we will continue to make local enquiries in relation to ownership, vacancy history, etc, and use the CPO process to acquire properties deemed to be suitable for social housing where all other means of returning the properties to use have been exhausted," the council reported.

The issue was highlighted at the February monthly meeting of Laois County Council.

The vacancy rate for Laois was 4%. The Local Authority with the highest rate of vacancy was Leitrim at 10.6%. The lowest local authority rate was 1.4% which was recorded in South Dublin.

The report reveals the occupancy rate by council electoral area. The Borris-in-Ossory Mountmellick Municipal District has the highest rate in Laois with 6.3% of homes with a power connection vacant. It is the most rural part of Laois but also the biggest geographically which is bookended at either end by Mountmellick and Rathdowney.

A report publised by the Central Statistics Office to assess vacancy rates right across Ireland publised in January was based on Metered Electricity Consumption 2021 down to small electoral divisions. The bar for the vacancy was the equivalent of the power needed to run a domestic fridge.

The research also shows that west and south of Laois have the highest rate of vacant homes while central Portlaoise also has a relatively high rate of empty homes. The vacancy rate for the whole county was 4%
 
With a population of more than 25,000 the Portlaoise Municipal District is the smallest but most densely populated part of the county. The vacancy rate in the district which also includes Ballinakill and Abbeyleix is 3.1%.

The north and east of Laois is possibly the fastest growing and includes the large towns of Portarlington on the Offaly border and Graiguecullen beside Carlow. It has the lowest vacancy rate at 2.8%. It also includes Stradbally.

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Just over 2% of Laois homes found to be empty have been officially declared vacant while just 12 out of 3,000 empty properties in Laois were subject to a levy from the council, according to another report published in January by the Office of the Planning Regulator (OPR) on December 30, 2022. 

Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien launched the third round of the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund (URDF) in January, worth €150 million, to help boost housing supply by bringing vacant buildings back into use.

The fund asks Laois and other local authorities to propose residential or commercial sites along with the work needed to de-risk or improve the site so that it is more attractive for reuse or sale.

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In early February it emerged that Laois County Council spent an average of €11,000 making 60 so-called 'void' homes fit for habitation in 2022. A total of €660,000, was recouped from the Department of Housing, Local Government.