The prospects of the MetroLink seeing the light of day in this half of the third Millennium got a boost last week when the owners of 40 apartments in Dublin city centre agreed to sell their homes for €550,000, including a €40,000 inconvenience fee, to make way for the underground railway.

Interestingly, the sale of these homes in the 70-strong College Gate apartment complex on Townsend Street occurred outside the compulsory purchase order (CPO) process with owners striking private deals with Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII).

TII’s determination to persuade owners that selling their homes and property directly rather than going through the cumbersome CPO process was worth their while is a measure of the massive pot of money at its disposal and of the political will to get the MetroLink off the ground.

Pity our political class hasn’t the same appetite to tackle the housing crisis as it has for its shiny new toy.

Data published at the weekend shows that despite a Government crackdown, most property owners liable for the vacant home tax don’t pay it.

About 98% of the country’s vacant home stock had no taxes paid on it last year, meaning that only 1,454 of our 80,000 vacant homes are tax-compliant.

The failure of the tax that has seen two hikes since its introduction three years ago, not to mention its deteriorating take year-on-year, raises doubts about the Government’s proposed new derelict property tax.

With an estimated 20,000 derelict home across the country, Finance Minister Simon Harris plans a tiered rollout of the new tax, slapping it on high-population areas initially and then gradually introducing it across the country.

But what is the point of expending resources on toothless legislation shorn of the political will to enforce it?

The Government makes all the right sounds about tackling the property crisis, casting it in almost reverential terms as the defining issue of our times.

But a parallel interest in maintaining property prices at historic levels so that homeowners, business people and the landlord class don’t abandon them at the polling booth means its hands are somewhat tied.

Yet a weekend poll showing that 85% of the public believe the State is not doing enough to tackle the problem of vacant or derelict buildings suggests that the Government is pushing an open door when it comes to getting precious housing stock back in circulation.

There is not a village or a town in the country that’s not blighted by derelict homes falling into ruin or homes lying vacant since elderly owners passed away or occupants moved on.

These are microcosms of our cities where vast levels of dereliction and vacancy are magnets for anti-social activity and drug-taking. In Dublin city centre, where homelessness is at record levels, more than 4,000 homes and commercial properties lie empty, one-fifth of them unoccupied for more than four years.

Dublin City Council’s Derelict Sites Register includes about 140 properties liable for levies, and there are plans to roughly treble it to at least 500.

The experts say 40,000 new builds per year is the magic number whereby our housing crisis will be resolved and supply will meet demand.

By that estimate, rescuing our 100,000 vacant and derelict homes represents two-and-a-half years of construction activity. And that’s not counting the empty floors over shops and offices, crying out for conversion into apartments to regenerate cities and towns, creating ‘living cities’ rather than ghost towns, shrouded in silence once staff leave for home.

Between them all, we could house thousands of people without a shovel hitting the sod, yet we prefer to turn them into a wasted opportunity.

Councils bear a lot of the blame. Most have a portfolio of derelict and vacant homes, the former often acquired through CPOs. Yet it can take them an age to get even houses that require minor cosmetic work ready for their new occupants. Other properties are put on ice because of cost.

For example, the plans for two adjoining derelict houses on Connaught Street in Phibsborough which were cancelled this year because of the €1.7million bill for remedial works. Had the council acted 20 years earlier when the houses were brought to its attention instead of trying to cajole the owner to do the right thing before ultimately buying the properties in 2019, the renovation could have been completed for a song.

Dublin City Council’s incompetence in letting properties crumble over years rather than promptly restoring them means that more of its houses face demolition than ever.

Seven years ago, it bought two derelict houses in Drumcondra, having stabilised them in 2012. But now it’s too late to refurbish them and the council is torn between demolition or selling the property ‘back to the private market’. You couldn’t make it up.

Dublin aims to finally tackle the problem of dereliction after creating the Dublin City Development Corporation, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) dedicated to city regeneration which will – once it’s up and running – shift responsibility from the councils.

It’s early days but if successful there is a case for an SPV in every region of the country where there’s a farcical level of foot-dragging and appeasing of private property owners by councils that prefer to passively watch houses lie idle or slide into decay than to do anything about it.

It will take money, legal powers, expertise and, crucially, a political appetite to combat dereliction and vacancy and create living towns and cities. Everything, in short, that seems so readily available to the MetroLink.

Taylor’s Love Story brings us a bit of happy news from the US – for once 

Taylor Swift’s wedding extravaganza went off without a hitch with her 1,000 Hollywood acquaintances, sorry guests, now sharing details of what some are calling the ‘wedding of the century’.

The event brought Manhattan to a standstill while Madison Square Gardens was turned into a fairytale set, decorated with massive, illuminated trees and artificial grass, and hung with oversized photographs of 36-year-old Taylor and her American footballer husband Travis Kelce, also 36, from childhood to their teenage years.

It sounds over-the-top and performative. Yet as respite from the usual grim diet of news from the US, via the unremittingly vindictive, vengeful and petty Trump White House, we’ll take it.