Anger is mounting among residents of \u2018unfinished estates\u2019 in Co Cork who say they are paying full Local Property Tax (LPT) but getting nothing in return.<\/p>\n
They claim their roads remain cratered, street lights unlit, and that water and sewerage systems regularly fail.<\/p>\n
Cork County Council is calling on finance minister Simon Harris to release additional funding so the local authority can bring these estates up to a standard that would allow them to be \u2018taken in charge\u2019, after which the council would assume responsibility for most of their upkeep.<\/p>\n
Several councillors have highlighted the growing anger they are hearing from residents in such estates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They have been told by council officials that the authority cannot take over running them until they are officially brought under local authority control, as insurance restrictions prevent the council from assuming responsibility beforehand.<\/p>\n
Independent councillor Ger Curley said there is \u201cutter frustration\u201d among residents at the lack of maintenance and upkeep in estates across the county.<\/p>\n
Many have seen developers go bust without finalising infrastructure and the bonds (insurance) they have paid to the council to carry out the unfinished works are too small to pay for the work needed.<\/p>\n
He said the Ballynoe estate in Cobh \u201cdoesn\u2019t have potholes, but craters”.<\/p>\n
It was built 30 years ago but the developer \u201cwent bust\u201d and didn\u2019t finish it.<\/p>\n
Mr Curley said other estates in that area were in the same position and \u201cthe residents deserve better”.<\/p>\n
He initially stated that a waiver should be put on LPT payments for residents in these situations but pulled back from that when senior council officials said they had reduced revenue for projects if that happened.<\/p>\n
Labour councillor Cathal Rasmussen said the cost of repairing such estates will only continue to grow and the Government needs to act now or it will cost significantly more in the long run.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re being contacted all the time by people wondering why they\u2019re paying LPT,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Fianna F\u00e1il councillor Sheila O\u2019Callaghan said a worrying development came to her attention from a constituent in an unfinished estate.<\/p>\n
She said a finance company refused to provide a mortgage to a buyer until Uisce \u00c9ireann provided it with a definitive timeline to take over the running of wastewater services treatment plants (WWTP) there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m very concerned that if lending institutions require confirmation of the status of an estate and its WWTP that this will seriously hinder purchases and sales of homes throughout the county,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The council is unable to take estates in charge if Uisce \u00c9ireann doesn’t take over WWTP services. There is a large backlog in it doing so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anger is mounting among residents of \u2018unfinished estates\u2019 in Co Cork who say they are paying full Local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[79,28858,63,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-348529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork-news","tag-cork-roads","tag-cork-county-council","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}