Land hoarders “are laughing” at local authorities and at local communities where they are allowing properties to lie idle and failing to pay €20.5 million in outstanding derelict site levies, the Dáil has heard.

Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould hit out at local authorities’ failure to enforce derelict sites’ levies and said the Minister for Housing had to deal with councils to ensure levies are applied and collected.

He pointed to the €140,000 levy left unpaid by the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) for the site on the canal in Ranelagh, Dublin, where one of a terrace of cottages partially collapsed on to the footpath and road, despite being in line for €23 million through the sale of the surrounding site.

The Cork North-Central TD said that Good Shepherd convent in his constituency “burned down a few weeks ago, the fourth major fire there of about a dozen other fires. Someone could have been killed”. He pointed to two other derelict sites in Drogheda where people are afraid to walk for fear of the buildings collapsing on them.

Raising the issue during Dáil housing questions, Mr Gould said there were 1,913 properties on the derelict sites register as of December 31st, 2023. “What is shocking is only one in three have been levied,” he said.

“Thirteen local authorities have applied no levies and 17 local authorities have collected zero, not a cent, not a euro.”

He added that local authorities applied €5.6 million in levies in 2023. “Do you know what was collected? €600,000,” he said, pointing out that €20.5 million is owed on the derelict sites levy.

He had asked the previous minister about it, yet “here we are years later” without progress. He had spoken to local authorities and some “don’t want to engage in it”.

Mr Gould said the local authorities were not enforcing it and it was the Minister’s responsibility to deal with local authorities and ensure they are enforcing the Derelict Sites Act.

[ Derelict Victorian houses ‘crumbling’ six years after €700,000 purchase by Dublin City CouncilOpens in new window ]

“Land hoarders are laughing at us and laughing at the people in the communities where they’re letting these sites lie idle,” he said.

Minister of State for Housing John Cummins said the annual levy on derelict sites had been increased to 7 per cent of market value from 3 per cent, “which will continue to apply until the site is rendered non-derelict”.

He acknowledged that 1,913 sites were on the register at the end of 2023. He said the 2024 figures are being collated, but some local councils had not filed their annual return and “we are reminding local authorities of their obligation to provide data”.

He stressed that “enforcement of the levy is a matter for local authorities” but he said the “carrot and stick approach” had worked in some areas.

The repair and lease scheme worked “exceptionally well” in his Waterford constituency and “about 50 per cent of the national total of repair and lease units have been delivered in Waterford” in one- and two-bed units in city and town centre areas.

The “stick approach” of the sites levy and compulsory purchase order where required were available, but what everyone wanted “is for those properties and those lands to be brought back into productive use”.

[ Dereliction levies: why are councils failing to act?Opens in new window ]

He said “there may be a time lag in terms of collection” but the liability remains in place until it is discharged.

Fine Gael TD Colm Burke pointed to Blackpool in Cork, “where we can’t do development because a flood relief programme that we identified back 12 years ago is still sitting on someone’s desk”.

Developers cannot get flood relief insurance and have difficulty in borrowing money to build, he said.