Many locals are dissatisfied that Co Wicklow’s largest town is looking down-at-heel and shabby A vacant property just two doors away from Minister for Finance Simon Harris's constituency office in Bray Sat Aug 15 2026 - 06:00 • 5 MIN READTánaiste Simon Harris recently accused local authorities of not doing enough to tackle “the scourge of dereliction” and vacant properties in Irish towns.The Minister for Finance and Wicklow TD does not have to look far for evidence of urban decay.There are two buildings in a shabby state either side of his constituency office on Quinsborough Road, Bray. One is the old Shoe Zone two doors away. The other is a building directly across the road, which at least is covered by a mural depicting Bray in times past. Shoe Zone has planning permission for a betting shop.Last June, Harris announced the Revenue Commissioners would in future collect the derelict sites tax as local authorities have not been efficient in doing it. The Government was “angry and frustrated” at local councils for “badly failing” on dereliction, he said.“How sickening is it if you’re a young person trying to buy a home and you’re living in a neighbourhood or a community or driving by boarded-up buildings, some of which are public buildings?”Derelict Ireland: An emptiness in Irish townsDereliction is a blight at any time but it is particularly troubling in a housing crisis when so many people are seeking a home of their own.Why are so many buildings left vacant, and what can be done?In this series, The Irish Times looks at vacancy and dereliction in towns across the four provinces of Ireland. Once-thriving towns are being hollowed out by shuttered businesses, many of them unable to compete with large retail chains or online operators. Reports from Wicklow, Roscommon, Cork and Donegal examine the challenges, as well as potential solutions to bring boarded-up streets back to life.Wicklow County Council has consistently had the fewest number of sites on its derelict sites register, which each of the 31 local authorities in the State is expected to keep. There are just four sites on the council’s derelict sites register – there were two until a few weeks ago. These sites are supposed to be subject to an annual levy of 7 per cent of their value. A vacant premises across the road from Minister for Finance Simon Harris's constituency office in Bray Nobody believes Wicklow has only four derelict properties, not even the council itself, which states that the current register is “not reflective of all sites across the county that may potentially meet the definition of a derelict site under the Derelict Sites Act 1990″.The council has introduced new procedures for the management of derelict sites and has allocated more staff to “actively pursue cases throughout the county”. It is now looking at 50 sites countywide and Bray will soon be inspected. Bray is now Ireland’s 10th biggest urban settlement with a population of 34,000 people. Given its proximity to Dublin and to the sea, it should be one of the most desirable places in Ireland to live in. When The Irish Times asked members of the Bray Open Forum about properties in the town that were either derelict or vacant, we received upwards of 80 replies.The general tenor of the response from locals is that the town is looking down-at-heel, the Victorian shelters along the seafront are in a bad state and there is too much vacancy and dereliction. The old Anvil site on Bray's Main Street is showing signs of years of vacancy and neglect What constitutes dereliction? Neither of the two vacant properties close to Harris’s constituency office is on the derelict sites register. Nor are two white-washed buildings on Castle Street outside the town opposite the shopping centre, one of which has ivy growing out of the windows. The Anvil building, a hardware shop that was a prominent fixture on Main Street for nearly 50 years, closed in 2020 and is looking particularly shabby. Across the road from it is the old cake shop, which is closed and has paint peeling from the walls. The old Celtic Bookmakers has tell-tale vegetation sprouting from cracks in the flat roof. There are other sites on Main Street that are vacant and for let or for sale. The Celtic Bookmakers on Bray's Main Street has been vacant for many years and there is vegetation growing from the roof Local resident Ciaran Hogan has been chronicling changes on Main Street since 2019. “The Main Street was a very different place. Anvil was a homeware store trading, Spoons’ cakes was a big hit with kids and parents alike, O’Brien’s offered lunch and coffee, Keegan’s bakery was for anyone with a sweet tooth, and a dozen more small businesses run by locals giving their all in business and building the fabric of community,” he said.“Now in the summer of 2026 all of those mentioned and many more have closed down, not to be replaced by anything. Those shops have all lay vacant for half a decade. Something is wrong with Bray if the Main Street has such visible signs of neglect and destitution for so long.”Bray is not alone in suffering from vacancy and dereliction, but Hogan contrasts Bray, which has a vacancy rate higher than the national average (15.2 per cent v 14.6 per cent), with nearby Greystones, which has a vacancy rate of just 5.3 per cent. The town’s great hope was the Bray Central Shopping Centre, which opened after much delay in 2023 and gained its anchor tenant Penneys in 2024. The five-screen Arc Cinema is scheduled to open in November this year – the town has no cinema to date despite its increasing population. Hogan contrasts the thriving seafront with Main Street and says the solution is to market Bray as a tourism and shopping destination. This would draw tourists from the seaside area into the town centre. He also believes that Bray should learn from how Greystones has managed to avoid vacancy. “Bray needs an immediate and rapid intervention because the current course we’re on will see the town rot from the core outwards, as many have done before,” he says.The mayor of Wicklow, Cllr Caroline Winstanley, has been living in Bray for 15 years. She believes Bray has a vacancy, not a dereliction, problem. “It’s a tricky thing. To be classed as a derelict property, it has to be in a really bad state of repair,” she explained, adding, though, that too many places have been allowed to remain vacant for too long. “We shouldn’t be allowing vacancy for this length of time,” she said. Mayor of Wicklow Cllr Caroline Winstanley believes towns need to reimagine their main streets “In the first [county council] budget we were looking at the relief that businesses were getting if their shops were vacant. They were getting 60 per cent relief on their commercial rates; we have since reduced that to 20 per cent,” she said. “Is that still too much of an incentive to keep a place vacant?” she asks. “For some people there are not enough consequences for having a premises vacant. Maybe they are waiting to get the best rent or to sell it eventually, but it is not great for us who are living here to see an empty building.” She believes all towns are struggling with how to reinvent their main streets in the internet era of online shopping. “It’s not easy. I think we still haven’t got our heads around about how we could use our main streets differently. We do have to adapt because we have to accept that most people shop online now. It’s not easy for shop owners. It’s definitely different.” As a Social Democrats councillor, she says she and her party support the Government’s above-the-shop initiative to convert vacant spaces into accommodation. This will have the twin virtues of providing much-needed accommodation while also enlivening town centres. A possible temporary solution to the problem of vacancy is “meanwhile use” – a vacant property is leased with a peppercorn rent for a pop-up shop or art space on the basis that the same premises will revert to a retail outlet if a tenant can be found, she believes. “This will give us some vibrancy on the streets and this will benefit the community. We need to be reimagining what we do.”IN THIS SECTION