Eleven years after initial government approval, 22 new dwellings in Moyross have yet to be built.
In February 2015, the Department of Housing approved The Cosgrave Park Phase 2 project.
Three years later in March 2018, the project received second-stage approval from the government.
It wasn’t until five years after that, in September 2023, that Limerick City and County Council issued a €507,000 tender for consultancy services to design the units in Moyross.
In February 2024, an architect was finally appointed.
But two years after the architectural appointment, and eleven years after the project was first announced, the site remains vacant.
When Limerick Voice requested records relating to the Moyross regeneration project under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) the council partially refused under Section 36 of the Act, which allows for sensitive protection of “deliberate processes.”
Despite acknowledging “serious interest by the community” for “maximum openness, transparency, accountability and value for money in the use of public funds,” “greater weight” was placed on favoring the withholding of records.
Limerick City and County Council did provide some data under the FOI request showing that Moyross is not the only site in need of attention: 340 properties (as of October 2025) owned by the council remain vacant.
In Moyross, multiple properties have been earmarked “for demolition” for over a decade, with one property derelict for just over 16 years.
Other less dilapidated properties need “Major Refurbishment” or are “Awaiting Minor Repairs.” Some of these properties have been in poor condition for approximately two years.
This visualisation by Limerick Voice uses data obtained through the FOI to demonstrate the average time needed to get properties back on the market across the county.
Properties within 50 meters are grouped into different categories, these include 93 properties requiring Major Refurbishment, 88 Awaiting Minor Repairs, 48 Allocated, 43 under Section 183, 42 For Demolition, 14 To Be Allocated, 8 On-hold, and 4 listed as Demountable.
There are several concentrated clusters of long-standing derelict buildings around Moyross, St. Mary’s Park, and O’Malley Park. The clustered properties around St. Mary’s Park, which included one property in Kings Island, have an average waiting time of more than six years.
Limerick City and County Council also own several derelict properties outside the city. In the countryside, 12 Abbeyfeale properties had an average dereliction time of about 3 and a half years, while 16 properties in Kilmallock have been sitting idle for an average of 16 months.
Limerick Voice reached out to Conor Sheehan of the Labour party for comment. The TD highlighted failures in the 2007 regeneration plan where financial and bureaucratic constraints stifled the project.
“In fairness to Limerick City and County Council, they have compulsorily acquired a number of properties, but the process is too slow due to complex ownership issues. That is why we need to see reform of the CPO process based on the Law Reform commission recommendations to speed up this process.”
He continued: “In relation to properties listed as needing ‘minor repairs,’ a huge issue for local authorities is there is a funding gap between what local authorities get per unit and the actual cost of refurbishment”. In Limerick, the local authority gets €11,000 per unit from the Department of Housing and the real cost per unit is around €48,000 and this forces the local authority to use its own limited resources, of which it does not have enough to cover the cost of returning all these properties to use. The process is also too slow as local authorities must wait for the department to approve the start of works which leads homes to be boarded up for months and years on end.”
Acknowledging the approval of the 22 homes in Moyross, the TD emphasised the need for momentum: “we need to see movement on the Ballygrennan site and construction begin on the train station.”
Generative text models were used in the production and implementation of this database