Podcast: Are listed buildings holding up development?

There are over 40,000 protected structures in Ireland, commonly known as listed buildings.

Several have fallen into disrepair and many others that are in state ownership are proving challenging and expensive to modernise and retrofit to today’s climate standards.

Recently, the HSE decided to transfer the James Weir building in Dublin 8 to the Land Development Agency.

On RTÉ’s Behind the Story, Assistant Professor of Architecture in UCD Orla Hegarty explained why buildings are protected.

“People might think it’s just about the architecture or the architectural quality of the building, but actually the reasons for protecting them are very, very broad,” she said.

“It also includes things that have an artistic value, cultural value [or] scientific – so it might be a building where something was invented.

“Once it’s either a proposed protected structure, or a protected structure, it has that protection that you can’t endanger the building – or do things without permission,” Prof Hegarty added.

She said that if people ignore a notice from the local authority about preventing a structure from becoming endangered, the authority can take action.

“If they see a building that’s in danger or deteriorating, and they can’t find the owner or the owner’s not acting, the local authority have powers to actually go in and do repairs on that building and access the site – and then look for the owner to pay for it afterwards,” she explained.

Prof Hegarty said there can be a misunderstanding about what can be done with a protected structure.

“The level of protection doesn’t mean you can’t do anything with this building, it just means you have to pause before you do anything – and you have to think carefully about what you do,” she said.

Prof Hegarty believes that the way new buildings are considered is changing.

“They’re financial assets now,” she said.

“I suppose historically buildings were built to serve a purpose – people needed somewhere for nurses to live or people needed housing – and now we see a lot of speculation in property.

“The value of the asset has a different value than the use of it, we’ve seen a huge amount of replacement of office buildings around Dublin – they’re all looking very international, very glassy.

“But the key thing with them…. is office buildings designed with really large open floor plates are really hard to convert (to apartments),” Prof Hegarty added.

You can listen to Behind the Story on the RTÉ Radio Player. You can also find episodes on Apple here, or on Spotify here.