This article is from page 8 of the 2012-04-24 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 8 JPG
CLARE County Council is examining eight unfinished housing estates in Clare where they believe that safety and security has become an issue. The local authority revealed at last night’s meeting of Clare County Council that it has written to a number of developers and financial institutions reminding them of their responsibility to ensure the safety of their developments. The local authority has also confirmed that it now believes that half of the county’s Category 4 ‘ghost’ estates no longer fall into this category, the worst category of estates. According to the local authority, only three of the six housing devel- opments that have been classified by the Department of the Environment as unfinished and developer-abandoned, or Category 4 estates, should still be in the category. The council say that they intend to contact the Department of the Environment and inform them of their opinion on this. Speaking at last night’s meeting of Clare County Council, Director of Services, Ger Dollard said that the local authority is deploying “quite a lot of resources” to the issue of the Category 4 developments and said that safety was the responsibility of the developer. He was responding to a joint motion put forward by Cllr John Crowe (FG) and Cllr Paul Murphy (FG) which asked for details on the condition of so-called ghost estates in the county. “It is the responsibiity of the property owner, developer or receivers to ensure that the site is secure and safe,” said a council spokesperson. “The council has written to developers and receivers with housing developments on the unfinished list, explaining to them their responsibilities in relation to the safety of the site.” Speaking on last night’s motion, Cllr John Crowe said that some Clare estates were in a “very, very bad condition”. “There are estates which are not even one quarter finished and no place for children to play in. There are open drains and other dangers,” he said.