Take a five-minute walk in any direction in Dublin city centre and you’ll come across boarded-up, even cemented-over shopfronts, upper floors supported by steel struts and foliage growing through the roof.

Properties in prime locations left to rot in the capital city, in the middle of a housing crises. It doesn’t make any kind of sense.

In theory it should be easy to find out who owns these decaying properties but it’s not. Nor is it straightforward to discover exactly why valuable properties have been left, sometimes for decades, as eyesores.

For a new Irish Times series, Derelict Dublin, Olivia Kelly, along with colleagues Ronan McGreevy and Jack White investigated why the city is blighted by decay and what the council is doing about it.

Kelly came into studio to explain.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon and Suzanne Brennan. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.