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......

If it's a cut and dried case the Council should just crack on with it, they shouldn't need to be bleating in the media about what they might do. This looks like a pressure tactic to get the type deal they're looking for.

Good question, it was put up for sale a few months ago.

The Council must maintain a vacant sites register in their area with sites that are suitable for housing that have not been put forward for development, and the funds levied go to the Council.

So again I think the Council are skating on ice here by making statements like this regarding sites that have been on the market, and which they've been trying to buy some or part of. Looks like bully boy tactics, and why not just impose the levy if that's the appropriate course of action?

No its the media comment that's the bully boy tactic.

If its correct that the levy should be applied then they should just go ahead and do it without any fuss.

I have seen Councils try and put a levy on sites that they've refused planning permission for, so there is all sorts of blaggarding going on.

Let me be clear - it is currently open to the Council to do this. Nothing impeding them in terms of Government policy.

I see what you're getting at but I think you're barking up the wrong tree.

Again worth recapping on the story here. While the article gave the impression that the owner has been sitting on this for years without doing anything, it appears he bought it in 2017 and it was subject to a legal dispute for until 2019.

If you were to sit down any try to formalise plans to develop a complex site like that, and more importantly to raise the funds to get going with it, you'd easily be looking at a couple of years before you got anywhere with it. The Council would know that themselves as a result of their experience with the North Quays.

The guy has put the site on the market in 2021, quite soon after the Council paused the North Quays project for a couple more years at least.The Council tried to buy some or all of it but it didn't work out for whatever reason.

The more I think of it Michael Walsh would want to be pretty careful here from an ethics perspective.

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.