Last week Olivia Kelly reported in The Irish Times that Dublin City Council was “finally” appearing “to be arming itself” in the battle against dereliction. Its superweapon, apparently, will be the Dublin City Development Corporation, a special-purpose vehicle (SPV) dedicated to city regeneration. This will happen “in the coming months”. The non-statutory SPV will have an “independent” board of directors that will be able to borrow and invest without affecting the council’s or the State’s balance sheet. We are told that the independent development company will have a “five- to 10-year business plan” but “will take time to scale up”.

In the meantime, the council will try to implement what it calls a “bold urban rejuvenation pilot” for two derelict properties on Middle Abbey Street and North Frederick Street, two of the most notorious derelict properties in the city centre.

Ronan McGreevy reported on Monday that 20 derelict properties visited by The Irish Times a year previously remained decrepit.

In 2024, in the dying days of the last government, a Dublin city taskforce was established under the chairmanship of David McRedmond. Its report drew attention to the problem of city-centre dereliction in the capital. Its imaginative proposals to counter dereliction were........

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