housing estate nightmare

The article below is from 2012.   

A big eye sore and a place that has been vandalized and stripped of everything of value.  I noticed this place when I first started walking to the recycle centre, it is located right near there.

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An entire housing estate that is subsiding as a result of being built on a bog should be levelled, most of its owners have told the High Court. The development has been referred to locally as the “Titanic site”, the court heard.

Radharc An Seascan, a 15-house estate at Meenmore overlooking Dungloe Bay in Co Donegal, was largely completed in 2007/8 and sold mostly to people from Northern Ireland who bought the houses as holiday homes and investments.  The owners have sued the builders.

Within a year of completion of the estate the entire site suffered serious subsidence because it was built on a peat bog, Desmond Murphy, counsel for 13 of the house owners, said.

The owners say the subsidence caused water pipes in the houses to break, damaged central heating and drainage/sewage systems, caused steps and ramps to detach from walls, and tarmac to sink.

Some of the owners had used the houses to holiday in themselves, while others had rented them out until the subsidence problems made them uninhabitable, the court heard.

The houses now attract anti-social behaviour, illegal dumping and have also been subjected to vandalism and theft, with the heating boilers from most of the houses stolen in October 2011, the owners say.

Holes of up to a metre wide have appeared on the site, posing a serious danger, particularly for children.

Most of the owners, who paid between €155,000 and €190,000 for the houses, told the court they believed all the houses should be knocked because they could not be economically repaired.

Info from the Irish Times, Oct 08, 2012