Gardaí would like to thank the media and the public for their assistance following the discovery
Search
24 Oct 2025
Search
24 Oct 2025
Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content.
Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist.
If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter .
Support our mission and join our community now.
To continue reading this article, you can subscribe for as little as €0.50 per week which will also give you access to all of our premium content and archived articles!
Alternatively, you can pay €0.50 per article, capped at €1 per day.
Thank you for supporting Ireland's best local journalism!
The council chief executive, Coilín O’Reilly, raised the issue at a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Housing on Tuesday.
Posters have been erected in Carlow Town comparing Carlow County Council officials to Nazis, an Oireachtas meeting has heard.
The council chief executive, Coilín O’Reilly, raised the issue at a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Housing on Tuesday.
Mr O’Reilly, who also chairs the City and County Managers Association, was speaking on the topic of using Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) to bring derelict properties back into use.
Mr O’Reilly said: “It’s not that it’s not a nice thing to do, because having a vacant derelict property is not a nice thing either, but we are taking a piece of property from somebody.”
He suggested that opposition to CPOs could be a product of Ireland’s “colonial history”.
READ NEXT: Rehab centre in Carlow officially opens up at The Waterfront Centre
“Like we would have had posters put up about me all over Carlow Town saying we’re worse than a certain German party of the 30s, so there is often a reaction to CPO,” he added.
Despite opposition, Mr O’Reilly told the meeting that Carlow County Council conducted 32 CPOs between 2023 and 2024.
As well as that, 146 derelict properties have been brought back into use by private owners.
“What happens is, you engage with the private owner and the private owner says ‘well I don’t want to lose my property, I better do something here’.
“The CPO is really the end part of a long process that as you work through there’s many different changes and routes you can take along the way.”
Mr O’Reilly went on to say that a CPO is the council’s last resort when it comes to derelict properties.
“A lot of time, the CPO comes through a family dispute, [we have] difficulty identifying who actually owns the property and then in the end you end up CPO-ing.
“But the key question is, how long do you engage? We have a case that we left for a year because the person said they were definitely fixing the property up for their daughter to live in. After a year-and-a-half, we had to say ‘you’ve had enough time’ and we CPO-ed it.”
Mr O’Reilly was speaking as TDs and Senators expressed frustration over the pace of converting derelict and vacant properties into homes.
Between 2023 and 2024, over 7,200 properties entered the CPO programme nationwide.
Subscribe or register today to discover more from DonegalLive.ie
Buy the e-paper of the Donegal Democrat, Donegal People's Press, Donegal Post and Inish Times here for instant access to Donegal's premier news titles.
Keep up with the latest news from Donegal with our daily newsletter featuring the most important stories of the day delivered to your inbox every evening at 5pm.
Follow us on
This publication supports the work of the Press Council of Ireland and Office of the Press Ombudsman, and our staff operate within the Code of Practice of the Press Council. You can obtain a copy of the Code, or contact the Council, at www.presscouncil.ie, Lo-call 1800 208 080 or email: info@presscouncil.ie.
