‘Why should the community of Mallow have to suffer such decay and dilapidation?’

It was the story that catapulted dereliction in Mallow in Co Cork on to the front pages.The largely skeletal remains of a local man, Tim O’Sullivan, were discovered in his long-abandoned house on Beecher Street in the town in 2023, some 22 years after he had died there, unknown to anyone.The house, which O’Sullivan bought in 1989, had been boarded up for years after it was assumed he had returned to the UK.The property was added to Cork County Council’s Derelict Sites Register in December 2022 – just six weeks before O’Sullivan was found by council staff.READ MOREStill boarded up today, the single-storey terraced cottage, which has since been sold, is one of about 2,000 properties listed nationally on the Derelict Sites Register, which is compiled from figures updated by each local authority in the State.Can Irish towns be revived?Derelict Ireland: Dereliction is a blight at any time but it is particularly troubling in a housing crisis. Why are so many buildings left vacant, and what can be done? In this series, The Irish Times reports from towns in Wicklow, Roscommon, Cork and Donegal: examining the widespread challenges, as well as local efforts to bring boarded-up streets back to life.Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill Not surprisingly, Cork, as the largest county in Ireland, is home to significant numbers of properties that have fallen into dereliction, an issue that affects everything from stand-alone isolated houses on country roads to run-down properties in towns and villages.On its most recent list, compiled on July 22nd, Cork County Council lists 155 properties on its Derelict Site Register. While some properties have been on the register since the early 2000s, most, including 9 Beecher Street in Mallow, have been added to the list in the past five years or so.Mallow tops the county’s list with 17 derelict properties, ahead of Bandon (14), Youghal (10), Kanturk (nine) and Fermoy and Kinsale, which both have eight.Derelict property at 9 Beecher Street in Mallow, Co Cork. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision In Mallow, the most striking examples of dereliction are on streets such as Thomas Davis Street and Bridge Street.Notable among these properties is the 2.5-metre high hoarding at 133 Bank Place that shadows Thomas Davis Street. Behind this hoarding lies what remains in rubble of the old Central Hotel, which once occupied pride of place on a large site in the heart of Mallow.Built about 1820, the hotel was integral to the social life of the town. This was the location where GAA representatives from Clare, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford gathered in June 1901 to form the Munster Council of the GAA.The Central Hotel closed in 2007 and gradually fell into disrepair. The hotel’s demise was hastened by a number of arson incidents in 2011 and 2012. Although once a listed building, it was finally deemed unsafe and demolished last year.For Frank O’Connor and Jude Sherry of the design agency Anois Agency and its companion protest and campaign group, FFUD (F**k Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt), Mallow’s town centre typifies many of the problems of urban decay they have encountered since they set up their campaign group #DerelictIreland to highlight the roughly 20,000 derelict buildings in Ireland.Can Irish towns be revived?Derelict Ireland: Dereliction is a blight at any time but it is particularly troubling in a housing crisis. Why are so many buildings left vacant, and what can be done? In this series, The Irish Times reports from towns in Wicklow, Roscommon, Cork and Donegal: examining the widespread challenges, as well as local efforts to bring boarded-up streets back to life.Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill “We hadn’t been in Mallow for a number of years until we started the campaign in 2020,” said Sherry.“And we got an awful shock walking along the main street and seeing places boarded up and that sort of dereliction and urban decay has a huge impact on a community.“Why should the community of Mallow and anyone passing through the centre of the town have to suffer that sort of decay and dilapidation? Because it does have an impact on people’s mindset. What sort of message does it send to families and individuals living in the town?”Mallow: 'The dynamic of retail has changed, with foreign companies opening in retail parks outside the town centre.' Photograph: Bryan O’Brien Mallow: Old cinema site, Thomas Davis St. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision Boarded up shofronts in Mallow. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien For O’Connor, the vacant site once occupied by the Central Hotel typifies the challenges facing communities across Ireland as they seek to ensure town centres are vibrant and attractive places for people to live, work and socialise.“I’m from Kiskeam in north Cork originally and I remember Mallow in the 1970s and 1980s being a vibrant town with a lot of shops. But it’s not now. And with the commuter link to Cork and its proximity to the city, you would expect it to be a thriving place with an attractive town centre,” he says.“There’s no way, to be honest, we should have got to this level of decay and dereliction in our urban centres like Mallow and sadly, Mallow is visually very typical of many Irish towns with vacancy and dereliction right in the heart of the town.”Jude Sherry and Frank O’Connor of Anois Agency and its companion protest and campaign group FFUD Following its closure in 2007, ownership of the Central Hotel changed hands. In 2016, it looked as if the structure might be salvaged when the then owners applied for planning permission for retail outlets with overhead apartments.A company called Mallow Capital Ltd had applied for planning permission for a mixed-use development on the site, only for the council to refuse planning permission on a number of grounds including the fact that the former hotel was a protected structure.A second attempt by the same owners to redevelop the site in 2018 similarly came to nothing. The council later commissioned a number of reports by engineers that found the building was structurally unsafe.[ ‘Disgraceful’: Dublin 7 residents on removal of ‘Selections’ shop from derelict registerOpens in new window ]In 2021, the council voted to delist the building as a protected structure and two years later, in October 2023, some 16 years after it closed as a hotel, the council listed the building on its Derelict Site Register.The current owners, Peppard Investment Ltd, had tendered to create a HSE hub on the site but that proposal fell through when the HSE withdrew the tender documents, leaving the owners with a new development challenge for a site zoned for retail and residential use.The council issued a demolition notice to Peppard in February 2025 and Peppard duly complied, demolishing the structure and fencing off the site before engaging with the council on pre-planning discussions for a development on the site.Mallow: Site of the former Central Hotel at 133 Bank Place. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision Site of the former Central Hotel, Mallow. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien Local politician, Labour TD Eoghan Kenny, has followed in the footsteps of his predecessor Sean Sherlock by regularly raising the issue of the Central Hotel site in the Dáil while also liaising closely with the council on what can be done with the site.“The fact Mallow has the highest amount of derelict properties in the county speaks volumes about how we tackle dereliction in this country. It says a lot about how quickly a local authority can act on derelict sites and the resources a local authority has to tackle derelict sites,” says Kenny, who was seven when the hotel closed.Eoghan Kenny, Labour TD for Cork North-Central, at the site of a former cinema on Thomas Davis Street in Mallow. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision He says that even though the property became liable for the derelict site levy on January 1st, 2024, no levy has been collected on the property, as far as he is aware.Kenny has been in regular contact with the council on the property and in March 2025 was told by council management that the site was privately owned and the council had no plans to acquire or lease the site as it wasn’t in its capital programme for the coming years.However, on February 27th last, the council issued a compulsory purchase order (CPO) to Peppard to buy the site. Peppard has since lodged an appeal with An Coimisiún Pleanála, with the further possibility of the company taking the council to court over the CPO decision.“I’ve an issue with the CPO,” says Kenny. “For nearly 20 years, Cork County Council did nothing with the site but now as soon as a private developer is actually showing some initiative and taking action on the site, the council slap a CPO on the land.“Would the council have not looked ahead and seen that Peppard, who are building houses elsewhere in Mallow and have an affinity with the town, have knocked the building and are preparing to apply for planning permission, would they have not let them it at, before issuing a CPO?”Mallow, Co Cork. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien Mallow, Co Cork. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision Local Fianna Fáil councillor Pat Hayes, a director of Mallow Chamber of Commerce, while not as implicitly critical of the council as Kenny, is sympathetic to Peppard following the latest development but remains hopeful that a resolution will be found.“The council issued the CPO because they felt it wasn’t progressing as quickly as they thought it should, but it was lying idle until Peppard bought it three years ago and we have made more progress with Peppard in those three years than we did in the previous 16 years,” says Hayes.“The dynamic of retail has changed in Mallow, with foreign companies opening in retail parks outside the town centre, but I know that the owners are trying to get the retail right and getting the right retailer in there would transform the town and bring people into the centre of Mallow.”The council and Peppard were both contacted for comment.