Compulsory sale orders proposed to tackle dereliction in Mayo

A councillor plans to put a motion before Mayo County Council in January calling for the introduction of compulsory sale orders (CSOs).

Cllr Jarlath Munnelly explained at last week’s meeting of the Ballina Municipal District that a CSO would differ from a compulsory purchase order (CPO), which is a legal tool that allows local authorities and other public bodies to acquire private land or property without the owner’s consent in the common good.

“Mayo Co Council can’t CPO every site. A CSO would put these buildings on the open market for sale. We need these empty buildings on the market."

Sally O’Leary, from the council’s environment section, told the meeting that there were 77 properties in the Ballina Municipal District on the council's Derelict Sites Register at the end of 2024. Five properties were removed from the register in 2025 and 10 added. There were also 50 derelict site levies served on property owners in the district. The levy equates to 7% of the valuation of the property.

Ms O'Leary said three properties were acquired under CPO in Ballina with another eight in the middle of this process. She said Mayo had far more properties on the derelict sites register than neighbouring counties and the latest data available, up to the end of 2023, showed that Mayo had 270 sites on the register with Roscommon having the next highest figure of 33 out of the surrounding counties.

Cllr Michael Loftus said he had a number of issues with the overall derelict sites process.

“When I was Cathaoirleach of Mayo County Council, I signed five CPOs, which is very few. In Crossmolina, we have six properties on the register in a flood zone. It is difficult to expect people to take over these properties when you have flooding potential."

Cllr Munnelly said there has been some successes when it came to derelict sites but the high number of registered properties in Mayo compared to Galway and Roscommon was an indication of “years of inaction". However, he welcomed the recent news that the Revenue Commissioners will take over the collection of the levy as a Derelict Property Tax under the Government’s Delivering Homes, Building Communities plan.

“We have far more derelict sites and that is because of years of inaction in Mayo. It is a damning statistic but that’s the past,” he said. “I welcome Revenue collecting the levy. When a letter comes from the local authority, it can be ignored but when the letter comes from Revenue, people tend to pay up, and we have seen that with the Local Property Tax.” 

Director of Services Catherine McConnell said it was “misleading” to think that Galway had so few derelict sites. She said there were more sites on the register in Mayo because there had been “a political push” in 2022 to identify and register derelict sites in the county. Ms McConnell said she believes the Derelict Property Tax collected by Revenue will be returned to the council.

• Published as part of the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.