Across the city, big billboards hang from vacant and derelict buildings

Along a main road in Inchicore, a large billboard, managed by Pzazz Media, advertises a Radio Nova show. 

The building it covers, at 129 Tyrconnell Road, is boarded up with plywood and graffitied – and is on the council’s derelict sites register. 

The advertising sign has been there since at least 2009, according to Google Street View. It doesn’t have planning permission.

Cathal O’Connor, managing director of Pathway Homes Ltd which owns the site, says the billboard was erected before he bought the building around 10 years ago. 

O’Connor says the company receives little in payment from Pzazz. That revenue doesn’t reduce his incentive to develop the building, he says. 

Because the site is on the derelict sites register, he faces annual fines – which would more than outweigh any profits from a billboard.  “We could be fined substantially by the council,” he says. 

He wants to develop it soon, he says. In September 2023, he had said he was in “pre-design” talks with the council about it.

In the south inner-city, on another long-term vacant building at 80 Thomas Street, a JC Decaux billboard advertises Brennan’s Bread. Also there since at least 2009, according to Google Street View. 

There is no planning permission for this billboard either. We couldn’t track the owners before publication. In June 2023, the council said it was hoping to buy the site, but land records show no new owner has registered since. 

JC Decaux, which manages the sign, didn’t respond to an email asking whether they check if owners have planning permission for advertising billboards. 

Former council planner Kieran Rose says that owners should apply for planning permission to put up billboards, but if the signs were erected more than seven years ago, the council cannot force the owners to take them down. 

“It's still unauthorised, it's just that the council cannot take enforcement action against the sign,” he says. 

If the owners make major changes, like switching to a digital advert, then the council could potentially take action, says Rose. 

Dublin City Council hasn’t responded to queries asking for an update on the two sites or the planning status of the billboards.

Barriers and derelict sites

O’Connor, of Pathway Homes, says he wants to crack on with developing the derelict site on Tyrconnell Road in Inchicore. He has developed derelict sites in other locations, he says. 

He points the finger at Dublin City Council for the fact that works are not already underway.

Earlier this year, he asked Dublin City Council if he could develop the building into four apartments without planning permission. 

There are certain exemptions to provide residential accommodation, but the council decided that the project was not exempt.

“We believe we should have got that exemption,” says O’Connor. Since he didn’t, he has to go back to the drawing board on a full planning application, he says, which will take months and cost tens of thousands of euros. 

O’Connor says his building projects in other locations have also encountered bureaucratic issues and delays in dealing with councils as well as getting services like ESB and water connections. 

He could build more homes if it weren’t for all the bureaucracy, he says. “It’s madness what we are going through.”

Green Party Councillor Michael Pidgeon says that the council needs to ramp up its procedures to tackle vacancy and dereliction. 

He doesn’t think the income from billboards would reduce the incentive to develop a vacant or derelict property, he says. If the site is on the derelict sites register, that incurs a levy of 7 percent of the site value each year, says Pidgeon. 

“There is no way that billboard would be generating that much money,” he says.

There are often complicated reasons behind vacancy, he says. The solution is to get more disused sites onto the derelict sites register – and for that the council needs more staff. 

It can be complicated to bring a derelict site back into use, particularly if it’s a protected structure and he has heard of cases where two council departments have given conflicting advice, he says.

“We also need to offer a really good, one-stop shop for people who own derelict buildings,” he says.

For people who are actively trying to bring buildings back into use, “the council needs to be really, aggressively, sound”, says Pidgeon. 

Billboards

Neither Pzazz nor JC Decaux responded to queries as to whether they require property owners who host their billboards to have planning permission.

Pidgeon says he would like to see the council discouraging more new billboards, particularly in the city centre. There are loads, he says.

He pushed for an amendment in the city development plan, the council’s planning bible, to ban new billboards in the city centre, he says. “Billboards aren’t banned, but they are as close as we can do.” 

The city development plan splits the city centre into two zones. 

In Zone 1 – mostly the Georgian core – there’s a “strong presumption against outdoor advertising”, it says

In Zone 2 – which includes part of the historic city centre –  is an area of “significant urban quality” with shops and commercial uses where adverts “may be permitted subject to special development management measures”.

Elsewhere in the city, billboards are open for consideration.