CE O’Reilly slams posters calling him a Nazi for taking properties into state ownership 

CARLOW County Council chief executive Coilín O’Reilly told an Oireachtas Committee on Housing that posters claiming he was worse than a Nazi have been erected in Carlow town for trying to take vacant and derelict properties into state ownership.

Speaking in the meeting with TDs and senators last Tuesday, Mr O’Reilly said: “We would have had posters up about me all over Carlow town, saying we’re worse than a certain German party of the ‘30s.” Mr O’Reilly was speaking about the council’s use of compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) and wondered whether Ireland’s colonial history was what evoked such strong emotions among people; however, he stressed that local councils only entered CPO proceedings as a last resort.

He said: “In most cases, you engage with private owners and they say, ‘I don’t want to lose this property, I’d better do something with it.’ The CPO is at the end of a process. It often comes when there is a family row over ownership or a difficulty identifying the owner.

“But the key question is, how long do you engage? We have a case that we left for a year because the person said they were definitely fixing the property up for their daughter to live in. After a year and a half, we had to say, ‘you’ve had enough time’ and we CPO-ed it.” 

Figures released on Wednesday last week by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage showed that 348 properties in Carlow entered the CPO Activation Programme in 2023, the fourth highest figure nationally, while 76 entered the programme in 2024. Separate data released from the department showed that €1.7 million has been allocated through the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant programme to return 32 vacant and derelict homes to active use in Carlow. 

Since the grant was first introduced in 2022, there have been 156 applications from Carlow, with 101 approvals.