Richard O'Donoghue pushes to modernise listed buildings for housing
Richard O'Donoghue called for changes to listed-building regulations to allow interior modernisation and to bring people back into upper floors. He told the minister he welcomed legislative amendments and asked for help resolving conflicts between conservation rules, fire regulations and planning.
Call for regulatory change
He argued that façades and roofscapes should be preserved while permitting internal alterations in non-iconic street houses so that young people and others can live over shops and homes.
Conservation and fire-safety constraints
He accepted the need for fire regulation but said conservation rules frequently prevent practical internal works, forcing owners to replace timber or sash windows at excessive cost to maintain historic appearance.
Curtilage and planning complications
He raised concerns about buildings within the curtilage of listed properties, sometimes 30 to 40 metres away, creating additional planning hurdles. He recounted a case where renovation and extension permissions were stalled because a rear building in the curtilage required costly assessment and work despite being structurally dangerous.
Appeal to the minister and local impact
He asked the minister for help in the new year to streamline processes so towns and villages, including in Limerick, can make buildings safe, modernise interiors where appropriate, and return vacant upper floors to residential use.
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Minister, I welcome any changes to amend different legislations, I welcome it from the point of view of planning. One thing I would like to look at in the new year is a list of buildings and building over a list of buildings. In Limerick we have a lot of list of buildings and we have a lot of buildings that are actually stopping young people from actually living over them, when it comes to fire regulation which I have no problem with, but the problem around the fire regulation is conservation won't allow us to alter the inside of the buildings, to allow for people that lived over these buildings for decades, for centuries. So all we want to do is get people back into the living areas, but the other thing we need to look at from the point of view of a list of buildings is buildings within the curtilage of a list of buildings. So you could have a building that is 30 and 40 metres away from it, and that is within the curtilage and that you have to be sensitive. What we need to do is for today's people, and we are in the 20th century, and we are looking at people that lived in the 1800s, from the 1400s, 1500s, 1600s all the way up along the line. They lived in these buildings. There was no such thing as the curtilage. We have now got to protect the front façade, the front roof structure, and if there are buildings that can be brought back in to use for young people or anyone that wants to live in them, we have got to be allowed to modernise the inside of buildings. Not iconic buildings now, but I am talking about houses. We have had one case where a young couple were allowed to extend onto the back of the house. But the front part of the house was listed. This was a street house. They were made to keep the timber, and all they said to them is you can take down the timber, you can slab it, and you have to put back up the timber again. Massive costs. Keep the front façade, keep the sash windows, keep the roofscape. Make it look like the old street, but allow people to modernise the inside of houses. Again, I am not talking about iconic buildings that we have, they have got to be protected. I am talking about buildings on streets that people can live in. We need to make sure we need to streamline this. I have one building at the moment, and because it is in the curtilage of a listed building, which is an OPW building, they have got a plan of permission to renovate the house, which we have done. They have got a plan of permission to extend the property, which is waiting because they gave planning for the building, but they never saw that there was a building at the back of it, that this architecture, it looks lovely. It is actually dangerous, it is going to fall into a neighbour's, but now they said they want to have this assessed. That is going to cost the assessment, and what they want done to it is a million euros, and they have the penny to throw at it. I want to make the building safe, and they are saying no. So again, Minister, in the new year I need your help to make sure we can get people back into our towns and villages, into buildings that we can modernise them, respect the streets, respect the iconic buildings, but get our people back into the upstairs of the list of buildings.
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