12 derelict Portrane cottages to be refurbished for social housing

Twelve derelict cottages on the St Ita’s campus in Portrane will be refurbished and used as social housing, Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien has announced.

The cottages, located on Portrane Avenue have been vacant for a number of years after the mental health hospital closed in 2014.

Minister O’Brien says he has been working with the Health Service Executive (HSE), which owned the properties, to bring the homes into the housing stock.

“I am delighted to now be in a position to approve the refurbishment of these cottages which will provide much needed homes to twelve families in our constituency,” he said in a statement.

“For a long time now I have been in contact with the HSE, Fingal County Council and of course my own Department on this matter.

“We have been working collaboratively and I want to thank each agency for their willingness to progress this project.”

“Anyone in the Portrane area knows these cottages, they know how long they have been vacant for and everyone wants them to be refurbished and brought back into productive use as homes in the community.”

In April last year, local councillor Adrian Henchy asked Fingal County Council to explore the possibility of restoring the cottages for the use of social housing.

At the time, the council said it had “exhausted all available avenues of funding” and “as the properties are in the ownership of the HSE, there are no readily identifiable sources of funding available to either the council or the Department of Housing for these works.”

Henchy said that the process has taken “a long time” but the news is “fantastic” for Portrane.

“Great collaboration between the HSE, Fingal County Council and the Department of Housing,” he said.

“I want to thank Cllr. Adrian Henchy who has worked alongside me on this issue and has regularly highlighted the need for action here and elsewhere in our constituency where we see vacancy,” Minister O’Brien said.

“I am determined as Minister to tackle the scourge that is vacancy.

“In the past two years alone we have managed to bring more than 6,000 vacant social homes back into productive use across the country and we are targeting a further 2,400 this year through my Department’s voids programme.

“Fingal County Council have been really excellent and responded with great enthusiasm in their uptake of the scheme.

“In the past two years they have brought 428 vacant social homes back into use.

“We dedicated an entire pathway in Housing for All to addressing vacancy and maximising the use of existing housing stock and we have a number of schemes in place which will help us do just that,” he concluded.