Council may 'intervene' at Waterford's once iconic Ard Rí site

land hoarding has to be stopped, owners just sit on their asset, waiting for its value to rise, just tax it!

they easily could, we re just very adverse to appropriately taxing wealth in the form of assets, especially related to property and land, at both the local and national level

the land should remain in state ownership, period!

we do have to prevent land hoarding though, and taxation is known to work reasonably well in doing so, and the state is of course the only way to implement that, so.....

yes the state has and does implement dreadful policies, that does incredible damage, but its what we got, taxation is a critical need, and we have no other way of implementing such policies, again, taxation of wealth in the form of assets such as land, is well documented to work well. you can see how our primary government parties work, in regards wealth accumulation, they re still stuck in this old thinking of tax wealth as little as possible, and direct it towards labour and consumption, its clearly failing, and theyre failing(falling) with it......

true, the state isnt fully utilizing its land resources, but land hoarding and dereliction has been increasing in the private domain, as most policies benefit such situations and outcomes, sometimes its best to do so, in order to maximize returns, without virtually making any investment, i.e. relatively easy money, by sitting and waiting for the assets to rise in value, by virtually doing nothing. this idea that the private sector is always far more 'efficient' than the state is actually another economic myth, both can be sh1t! clear examples of this in waterford in the private domain would be previous waterford crystal land/property and of course ard ri land/property....

That Hotel will never be sorted, The land was surveyed by a british company and they stayed in a local hotel during their stay for the work, a guy i know who looked after them during their stay, said they told him the drainage was never right on the land and when the ground was dug the toxic waste was so far down into the rock that it eould never be safe or cost wayyyyyy too much to remedy, one of the many required reports before any other progress cud be made, these are some of the delays people dont realise are on going, not to mention an agreed sale price to someone else aparrantly sale was agreed with one party onlyto be cancelled and sold to someone else, then legal disputes followed.

Could they even knock the current building that's there in the meantime? At least then you wouldn't have a massive derelict structure staring you in the face everytime you looked across the river, and I would imagine they will have to knock it for a new development anyway.

You have a lot of faith in the state to get things right with their involvement. There's at least as much chance that they will make things worse. If they do intervene more, I hope that they keep it simple and stick to basic things like just building houses or, possibly better, put in the infrastructure needed for housing.

One big issue currently is the cost of building houses. Partly, this is down to general rises in the cost of materials and labour. However, another big issue is the ongoing increase in building standards. The cost of building is going up all the time so much so that it's no longer economic to build apartments in most of the country.

theres no other way of doing this, the state has been stepping back from providing this critical need for decades now, and this has now completely failed, we re only now slowly starting to accept this, some will never accept it. this will not be an easy fix nor quick, i suspect we ll still be dealing with housing problems heading into the next decade, but hopefully we ll be well on the way to solving them. yes, more state involvement will be problematic, and of course there will be failures, but there simply isnt any other way of doing this, the market alone will never resolve this, it has become too problematic, and the fact its main elements, primarily the fire sectors, are hard wired for wealth extraction, at all costs, which has just resulted in this mess, along side state failures of course, but when you have continuous governments simply trying to support such behaviors, no wonder, we are where we are!

the state is gonna need major private sector involvement to get the job done though, as it doesnt have the abilities to do it alone, but strict conditions are gonna have to be set from the very beginning, in particular, no excess profits, this wont be an easy one, we ve allowed these major private sector industries a free reign for too long now, and the whole thing is a complete mess. we need to urgently increase state ownership of property, from public housing to council housing, and beyond....

the only way i can see of dealing with the materials issue, is to accumulate the purchases of materials, again the state would need to be involved in this process, at the moment, most entities are negotiating for materials on an individual bases, but if there was an accumulation of negotiations, this might reduce the overall costs, might, but again, this also wont be easy....

it does seem like theres been a fairly dramatic increase in regs, particularly in relation to building apartments, this to will need to be investigated, and if theres no adjustments made, or not enough for builders to be able to build, and make money from, again, the state is gonna have to step in, and possibly subsidize these works....

none of this is gonna be quick or easy, this is one hell of a challenge, but it now has to be done, or we ll probably end up fcuked, our property problems must be costing investment and jobs from being created....

Seamus Walsh was apparently on WLR. Says matters are still before the courts, so he can’t do anything yet. But the plans are for a 132 room 3 star apartment hotel, 5 acre eco park, 455 residential units (houses and apartments) and a neighbourhood centre incorporating shops, a creche, and a medical centre.

Theres a picture of a plan on another article

Gut feeling says this is not the man I would want to develop the most iconic site in Waterford.

I don't think I trust much of what he's saying.

I will believe it when I see it tbh. This guy sits on land and will also now do the same in New Ross. Bilberry site also just a waste land waiting to be developed I can see why the council don’t entertain him anymore. I know he gave reasons as to the delay but it’s going on years now surely the court process is nearly exhausted!

I can't remember if it was Waterford council or somewhere else who were asked why they've collected so little vacant property tax and their answer was literally "because it's too hard".

The problem is somebody many years ago was successful in obtaining a preservation order for the facade