Room to Improve - Grants 😱

Surely not the people who had kids toys and family photos in the house "they were not or did not live in" or the people who encouraged them to apply for the "Renovation of Vacant and Derelict Homes grant" or who were involved in what the Quantity surveryor etc etc said was "essentially a New-Build" (her words, not mine)?

That house when it was sold was in much better condition than most of the houses we were looking to buy.

I suppose id be told to pay a grant back if i got a grant for a derelict house on a clearly not derelict house.

But this is a TV show, so its ok for them. Id probably end up down the police station for fraud.

And even if it wasnt lived in for two years after they bought it, that doesnt make it derelict. My idea of dereliction and what that house was are two different things. But carry on, take my hard earned money to give to these people on TV while I pay through the nose.

why is everyone focusing so much on the off hand comment that it was essentially a new build? All they were doing is referring to the scale of the work carried out not saying that the house is a new build. Like there's no line in the grants that says % of original house must be retained

the only guidance I've coins is saying that completely demolishing the building and rebuilding a new one isn't allowed. They didn't completely demolish it, they kept the original external walls and some internal walls.

I’d have to agree with this.

I’d also be of the opinion that the grants are there for anyone to apply for. If you get accepted for the grant then great job, if you don’t why would you be looking around to see who else got it and how can you f**k up their grant for them. It seems like begrudgery to me.

Anyone gullible enough to believe everything you hear on see on the likes of these programmes has bigger issues to worry about rather than whether the neighbours got the grant or not.

Also with the obscene amount of money that couple have spent for the end product they have then they have more than paid the grant amount back to revenue from their spending. I’d argue they’d be a far more suitable candidate financially from a government perspective than a lad good with his hands that gets the grants and does up a house himself for say €100k meaning there’s very little gone back to revenue from him compared to an almost €700k job.

The little bungalow was not a derelict house, or it would not have sold for €303,000 in mid 2022.

Fine looking house, if it was derelict, so are most of the houses in the country.

And Dermot did not say exactly what was wrong with the roof: yet we saw it all coming off and the JCB demolishing a 3m high section at the top of the end wall etc. The ceilings in the main part of the house were fine.

We've seen the photos of it for sale. Just going by those, it was in better condition than our house here and many neighbours places. As often the case here, it's not what you know but who you know. No way should they have received €99K of funding. The rest of the professional fees associated with the show are fair enough, that's a special case. But if they really did get €99K, a good portion should be handed back.

Francie, you're right about the roof. During the programme, it was said that a problem came to light with the roof during the renovation - the joists were rotten and the whole roof had to be replaced. It was mentioned so briefly that it might easily have been missed.

I don't know about the grant rules, but maybe this made it eligible for the derelict grant?

If they got the grant and it didn't meet the criteria then of course there is an issue.

What we don't know is what criteria was submitted and what was the actual standing of the house.

Let's have a look at that roof - we can see that the tiling looks in good order, the ridge tiles look intact and in good order, flashing around the chimney looks neat. What we can't see are the gulleys and the lead in them but judging by rest of the roof, they would be unlikely to be in dire condition.

So how exactly would the joists be rotten - where and to what extent. Maybe there was a leak from a water tank in the attic and some localised problem. But I don't know how on the basis of above, you could say that roof should be condemned. Bannon has explanations to make.

I have seen wall plates rot because of water ingress underneath them and that continues over time into other parts.

Dry rot can also affect properties especially if works are carried out that closes off airflow or infected timbers are brought in. This had a badly built add-on built which may have caused untold issues.

There is just no way to tell from a photo like that.

I don't blame the couple though to be honest. If an Architect told me I was entitled to these grants I would apply for them no questions asked. What needs to be clarified is if they were entitled to them. If not then you would believe someone would be responsible for paying the money back. Then it comes down to the paper work. Is it possible that DB would have signed off on the application in his name?

It really is amazing that the approach to this was so casual. The criteria is black and white and the definition of derelict and vacant are clear.

I think it's up to the architect at this point to prove that the house was in fact vacant. You'd wonder has the grant been paid yet. Could end up that the builder is left out of pocket.

That house was built a long time ago. The roof was probably never up to standards. The fact that it was still up isn't enough for an engineer to sign off on it.

Correct. I wonder if Dermot was suspicious that the couple was living there - when he went in to one room and remarked on the flowers in the far corner, the response that came back was that they were "artificial flowers". We saw family photos, kids toys, shampoo bottles, briquettes beside the fire, white coat on the back of the door etc etc. The complaint was that the house was "cold" ie badly insulated ( compared to modern standards ), not that there were problems with the roof or it was structurally unsound.

The clients could have done a 30 second google which would have told them what the Vacant and Derelict property grant was really for....don't tell me they did not do that?

The project near me (Drum, Co. Monaghan) rented in the furniture for the finished segment of the programme. Nobody would have guessed that watching it.

It was clearly a production decision to do that as the focus is entertainment. The same has probably happened on other shows. Don't believe everything you see.