Over €130,000 has been billed to owners of derelict sites in Clare so far this year.
It comes almost a year-and-a-half after it was revealed Clare County Council had failed to apply the Derelict Sites Levy for any of the sites on its register since the levy’s introduction five years previously.
The Derelict Sites Levy is an annual tax of 7% of the value of a site which appears on the Derelict Sites Register.
In May of 2023, it was revealed that Clare County Council was one of 12 local authorities nationwide which had failed to collect any money owed to it under the levy since it came into being in 2018.
At the time, the local authority said it intended to “initiate the collection process” for the 13 sites which were then on its register “over the coming weeks”.
In July of last year meanwhile, figures released to Social Democrats TD Cian O’Callaghan showed the total owed to Clare County Council which it had failed to collect was €449,960.
Across last year, 24 sites were added to the local authority’s Derelict Sites Register while, so far in 2024, 31 have been entered onto it.
A total figure of €136,360 has been billed to the owners of sites in Clare that have been left idle this year to date, with €3,500 billed in September alone.
Clare County Council says that following the commencement of the valuation process of the county’s derelict sites last year, three owners have appealed their sites’ respective valuations.
The local authority states that “while decisions are awaited on two appeals, one appeal by an owner has recently been rejected”.
