12 April, 2021

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.









36 comments:

  1. Looks everywhere the same. No investments in ground research beforehand. If Almere was build 10 km more to the east we could have spared millions of euro's because there is a sandbank a few m below the surface but here its all peat and clay that made it necessary to use everywhere concrete poles and to made it worse its a delta of rivers and streams so that I now have poles of 18 m on one side and 7 m on the other side. The builders discovered that when they begun and that was very pricey and another time delay.

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  2. Hi Bill.

    That's really bad for the owners.
    And now everyone will shift the blame to the other.
    Nobody wants to be liable and pay for the costs.

    Greetings from Patricia.

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  3. It's really bad for the owner of houses... They are looking but as I understood it's dangerous too.. Happy new week 🙏☺️

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  4. Hello,
    I am surprised they were even given a building permit to start building in such an area. I would think the bogs like our marsh/swamp and wetlands are protected and people can not build on that land. People are learning they can not build to close to waterways and the ocean. Take care, have a happy day and a great new week!

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  5. It is a mystery to me that they were able to obtain a permit to build there in the first place. Maybe brown bags of money were passed under some local planning official's desk.

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  6. Looks so sad. Here we had a major flood a few years back and all in that flood plain were moved to practically campers for a while before it was sorted..then the looting began and what not. Finally, they tore the place down but that seemed to take years to do.

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  7. What has happened now since 2012?

    God bless.

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    Replies
    1. I didn't find any info on that. I do hope they came up with a settlement for the owners.

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    2. One hopeful owner is trying to sell on auction at the moment

      https://www.daft.ie/for-sale/semi-detached-house-7-radharc-na-seascan-dungloe-co-donegal/3224012

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    3. Sale fell through, going through a second auction in Oct 2021
      https://www.daft.ie/for-sale/semi-detached-house-7-radharc-na-seascan-dungloe-co-donegal/3574023

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  8. Good grief! Someone dropped the ball on that one!

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  9. Wow! I sure hope the property owners were able to get their money back. That builder sure didn't do his homework. A shame too, it looks like it was a pretty development.

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  10. sad story...
    houses and place look nice...

    Thank you for sharing the story.

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  11. One would think that there were other shoddy building practices used in this development.

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  12. It sounds like some corruption was going on when these places were built and sold. They are nice looking places. That's a real shame.

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  13. How sad this housing project is such a failure. You can see the sadness and loss in your photos.

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  14. How awful...and like many economic losses, I would imagine those who invested will not received their money back. They do look nice, and it's amazing to hear that they were even finished without anyone knowing about the situation...perhaps as others have suggested, someone did know and went ahead anyway.

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  15. Oh gosh that’s awful. Sad on so many levels. So after all these years it is still there and empty and rotting away? What happened to the court cases and to the builder?

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  16. Somebody authorized the building on a bog in the first place? Who miss that I wonder?

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  17. What a nightmare for those poor people who bought there. One can only imagine the stress that they have been under for years.

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  18. They are just blocked up but not taken down. They should be. There was a housing development near a place I used to live it was built on peat bogs and of course there were problems from the beginning. So there were empty houses and half built houses but eventually some were fixed up and some torn down. No real problems really solved though
    MB

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  19. Que tristeza, Bill!
    Um beijinho!
    Megy Maia🐦♡ 🐦

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  20. That's terrible! I hope the people who bought the houses are compensated!

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  21. Oh my!
    I do hope that the people eventually got some sort of settlement money offered.

    All the best Jan

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  22. No pensé que pudiera pasar en países como Irlanda en mi país paso una cosa similar. Te mando un beso

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  23. Sad ending to the pretty houses.

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  24. Oh my gosh what a huge disaster Bill.. some real estate agents are so dodgy!

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  25. Nem imagino o pesadelo que isto não representou para cada propriério... casas novas, compradas com imensos sacrifícios... e num sitio que parecia ter tudo para ser excelente... aparentemente!...
    Adorei a partilha e as fotos! Abraço!
    Ana

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