Borris ghost estate first to receive government funding in country

After a three year delay, work will finally begin this week in restoring an unsafe housing estate in Borris In Ossary.

 

€5 million has been allocated for safety improvements to ghost estates all over the country by the Department of the Environment. 

Four estates in Laois have been allocated funding of €59,000. Residents in Glenall housing estate, Borris in Ossory will be the first to benefit from the money, with €32,000 set aside for its restoration. The rest of the funding is being divided between Slina Mona (Portarlington), Rushall (Mountrath), and Radhairc na Sleibhte(Mountrath). 

 Walking through the Glenall housing estate, it is questionable whether this figure would even be enough to fix all its problems. 

Visitors to the area are met with an apocalyptic sight; Just yards from the main green area of the estate are uncovered sewerage lines, the foul odour of which has plagued residents for weeks at a time. 20 unfinished houses, stand all in line. Windows are broken; shards of glass, scaffolding and building materials lay scattered around the estate, with vacant houses regularly being broken into and stripped of fixtures and fittings.  

Rhoda and John Bergin, live in one of the six occupied houses and say the living conditions are “horrific”. 

“Just look around, it’s absolutely terrible. We can’t let our daughter out of our sight, even after efforts from ourselves with help from Fás to clean up; there are bars and pipes around. If she fell on them she could be impaled” said Rhoda.  

“There are lots of exposed holes down the field where the waste from the houses flow, anyone could fall into them as the grass is so high around”, said a worried John Brogan, who feels the work “can’t start soon enough”.  

Glenall estate in Borris was supposed to be an exclusive development of 60 houses when it was built back in 2008.  Only 26 houses have been built.

 Laois County Councillor for the Borris in Ossary area John King is in full support of the news to clean up the estate, while remaining critical of the developers who built the houses and left area in such disrepair. “Hopefully this will ensure a better quality of life for the people living there” said King, “But from the start, it was crazy for those builders to go in with plans for so many houses, seeing as there was no employment in Borris in Ossory to support it. You must have the industry there first before you build 60 new houses, it was all done in greed”, he added.   

 

Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley welcomes the report on unfinished housing estates but is of the opinion that “much more needs to be done. €5million is a start, but obviously given the sheer volume of ghost estates that we are faced with, this is inadequate to deal with the scale of the problem. 

Fine Gael TD Charlie Flanagan has highlighted the “need for developers and financial institutions to take a more pro-active approach in working out long term solutions for ghost estates”. Deputy Flanagan also ensured that he will call on “the stakeholders in Laois/Offaly to honour their responsibilities.” 

Such ghost estates are the most visible scares are this country’s spectacular economic crash, yet Minister has said he does not see the need for widespread demolition despite the confirmation that over 200 ghost estates are still in a dangerous condition around the country


Repeated attempts to contact the number advertised for sales on the entrance sign to Glenall housing estate have proved fruitless.