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OWNERS OF APARTMENTS with leaks, damp issues and fire safety defects have said they have been ‘aggressively’ pursued for costs to repair fire safety and water ingress issues.
Tens of thousands of apartment units built during the Celtic Tiger era are estimated to be affected by construction defects, largely relating to fire safety deficiencies such as a lack of fire stopping between apartments, or water ingress causing leaks and damp.
Some experts in the area say the real number could be in excess of 100,000; it could take years before the final number to come to light.
Typical costs for each homeowner are usually set at between €15,000 and €20,000 and some developments are affected by both issues, which can double the repair bill.
Campaigners pushing the government to take action to help those impacted have said contract law and statutes of limitation severely restrict the ability of buyers to pursue developers once issues become apparent so the entire financial burden falls on those who own the properties.
One homeowner, Michael, who owns an apartment in a north Dublin complex, told The Journal he was served with legal papers just last week, informing him he had ten days to pay €8,000 for remedial works to address water ingress issues.
The serving of legal papers followed months of correspondence, seen by The Journal, between Michael and the owner management company to reach a repayment arrangement as he said he cannot afford to pay the full amount up front. All property owners in these kinds of developments are members of owner management companies, have a board of directors and vote on issues such as the management of these kinds of works.
Michael said the defects have caused leaks in the roofing of the apartment blocks, damp issues with the exterior plaster and water retention in balconies which he said have caused “chunks of the fascias to fall off”.
He received a detailed report on the works needed and the estimated costs early last year and soon after informed the owner management company he did not have the almost €8,000 required, but wanted to work out a regular repayment plan.
“I wasn’t neglecting the fact that the work needed to be done, I know it needs to be and I don’t know who else is going to pay it so I thought so long as they were open to a payment plan it would be fine,” he said.
After his first two offers he said he received his first legal letter in May 2021.
“I think we were still in lockdown, I remember being so stressed out, I just think the way it was handled and the lack of communication from the management company, the fact that there was no delicacy about it, it was all very heavy-handed,” he said.
“It felt quite threatening, I got back in touch and increased my offer but there’s a limit to what I can pay with the mortgage and management fees as well.”
He arranged to borrow money from family to increase his offer to €620 a month over 12 months.
“I didn’t hear about about that either until I got these papers, there was a knock on the door and they asked if that was my name and handed it over,” he said.
“It says unless I pay in ten days I’ll be summonsed to court – that’s terrifying, so I was really concerned, I don’t have that lump sum and I couldn’t see where I’d get the money from.”
When he called the owner management company’s solicitor to ask what an acceptable arrangement would look like he said he was told if he paid €1,000 up front and then €300 per month after that, it would be accepted by the owner management company.
“I had offered more than €600 per month when I arranged help from my brother – and they never said if I make a €1,000 up front payment they’d accept the monthly offers,” he said. “I could have done that months ago and had so much of it paid off by now.
“There was no understanding that all of this started during the January 2021 lockdown, it was all so abrupt and impersonal and aggressive during what was a scary time for everyone anyway.”
Another homeowner in a different complex said he had a similar experience after he informed his owner management company that he would have trouble paying for fire safety defect repairs.
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In his case the developer contributed €490,000 towards the more than €1.3 million total bill for the repairs. The cost for his one-bed apartment is just under €16,000.
“They wanted it all in one go, but they also said they would accept it in instalments once everything was paid by the time the works were completed – five to six months,” he said.
He was first notified of the defects in February 2020 and as a hospitality worker he was unemployed for a significant period of time after that due to Covid-19 restrictions so he was unable to pay the requested amount.
“There was an initial letter threatening legal action including securing a judgement against me for the sum owed and initiating bankruptcy proceedings against me, it was crazy stuff altogether,” he said.
“It caused me massive stress, having a bill like that hanging over me and I had barely earned anything more than minimum wage for two years previous.”
He did manage to come to an arrangement with the owner management company and used his savings to pay an up-front cost of €7,000, with an agreement to pay smaller monthly installments until the entire bill is paid off.
Building regulations
The Construction Defect Alliance, the campaign group for impacted homeowners, has around 30,000 affected properties on its database but estimates that as many as 120,000 properties may have one or more of these types of structural deficits.
Speaking to The Journal, spokesperson Pat Montague said owner-occupiers are “the ones who are most squeezed” when it comes to affording these bills of sometimes tens of thousand of euro.
“People are already paying service charges, they’re hit by the cost of living, they’re paying mortgages and then this comes in, they just don’t have ready cash. And the problem is, if you go to a bank you’re paying interest rates on top of that.”
He acknowledged the frustration of homeowners who argue that these costs should not be their responsibility as they had surveyors look at their apartments before they bought and fire certs were in place. Building regulations at the time these homes were built were only required an inspection to be done after the units were completed.
This was a visual inspection, to be done by an architect or an engineer, for example, who was working on the project. There was also a requirement for 15% of these projects to be inspected by building control staff from local authorities.
Montague said many of the defects that are now causing issues could not be spotted through a basic visual inspection after the buildings were finished as the walls – which should contain fire stopping – were closed up and water ingress issues like leaks and mould take time to appear.
He said owner management companies, of which all owners are members, were left in a difficult position as they have a legal duty to address any issues that are a threat to the health and safety of those living in a development.
“There are pressures on them to do something and the problem is the only real route they have to fund these works is through a levy on the members. In reality there is no effective legal route to get at the builder developers,” he explained.
If you want to sue them under tort, which is basically negligence or contract, there’s a six year statute of limitations, so they’re effectively statute barred from suing in civil law in that way [once issues become apparent]. The other thing is that all of the builder developers set up what are called special purpose vehicle companies for each development, which basically insulates their assets from being got at if somebody wants to sue them.
He said the owners of one development were told that there was about a 25% chance of success if they pursued legal action, it would cost a minimum of €250,000 to fund this action and even if they were successful “the chances of getting money were virtually nil”.
“The builders and developers set up their companies deliberately to protect themselves from legal action and company law facilitates them to do it,” he said.
Montague said the legal obligations of the owner management companies to fix these defects as well as the genuine concerns about the safety of residents, “is pitting neighbours against neighbours” when some owners cannot afford to pay or refuse because they do not believe it should be their responsibility.
“It’s absolutely horrendous, the stresses and strains for people because of being aware it is not safe from a fire safety point of view or is unhealthy with damp and then it does cause rows between people at general meetings if people are being pursued legally to recover the levies. It’s absolutely awful. It leads to huge neighbours disputes.”
The Department of Housing has established an independent working group to examine fire safety and structural safety defects in apartments and duplexes built between 1991 and 2013.
The Construction Defects Alliance has suggested a number of solutions to this working group, including a grant scheme, tax relief and access to low cost loans.
This group, which has been meeting monthly since March last year, will report back to the Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien on the scale of the problem as well as the costs associated with repairs later this year.
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So Dr Anthony Holohan, it’s okay for children to be in school in a full class for five hours with approximately 30 other pupils but it’s not okay to sit down in a restaurant for about an hour with your family for a meal!
@Jimmy Pea: And ok for them to be inside a hotel bar restaurant for hours on end yet a normal bar restaurant is somehow more dangerous to kids. Laughable.
@Paul Furey: Where are your facts Paul?!?! You never have any…… Heres an exert from an article and a link to the article pointing out that Holohan was against face masks for the public initially.
“Dr Holohan and others trotted out a litany of reasons why face masks would be an ineffective measure for the general public.”
@Paul Hedderman: at the time he was following what was public health advice world wide, people really need to build a bridge and stop getting personal about Dr Holohan.
@Jimmy Pea: oh change the record. People say the same thing every single day. Everything doesn’t revolve around sitting in a darned restaurant. Dr Holohan is doing the best he can with the tools he has (pardon the pun lol) and don’t bring up the cervical checks either. That was tragic, absolutely heartbreaking but he didn’t single handedly tell all those women they were fine. Give the man a break for goodness sake.
@GClare: It wasn’t public health advice worldwide at the time, and many countries had implemented masks months before us. In certain countries like Ireland and the US, the government flat out lied to us about mask wearing. That was the Irish public health advice at the time. Blatantly lying to the people of Ireland has consequences for future public health advice, such as this indoor dining charade.
@Jimmy Pea: That statement was the clearest signal of NPHET being allowed to over step their mark repeatedly. Even with the slightest good news story of families being allowed to finally dine together (behind all other countries) they feel the need to put the sword in. Why do anything at all ever?
“The Chief Medical Officer yesterday advised parents that it is safer not to bring children into indoor dining settings.” How was it safe last year when we had no vaccines and the vulnerable weren’t protected with vaccines? But now this year its not safe? What has changed between this year and last year? Has the virus gotten more deadly because globally deaths are nowhere near what they were last year?
Lastly I’d love to know where did he get his information form to come to this conclusion or is it just his opinion which is not based on facts or science?
@David Clements: We have a paradox. How is it safe to go to a pub inside in Newry and not in Dundalk? Its safe for an unvaccinated family to have a meal indoors in a hotel restaurant but not in one with no hotel. If safe all over Europe for unvaccinated kids to have meal with their parents but its unsafe here? The whole of Europe is lifting restrictions, in Ireland we had introducing more restrictions and bigger fines and penalties.
They have lost the public on this. We all saw the football stadiums full of people. Bars and restaurants full of people enjoying themselves. Maybe we have a different strain of Covid here that no one told us about.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: Newry is in a different country, different jurisdiction. 48,000 cases in the UK yesterday and 49 deaths. Would you be hedging bets on any UK decision being safe given their disastrous mismanagement of the crisis? I wouldn’t. The rest of Europe is not opening up and relaxing restrictions. They are doing the opposite.
It’s a terrible decision. We should be either following medical evidence which advises against unvaccinated in a crowded indoor setting or advocate personal responsibility and allow people to make their own decisions.
This idea of allowing some unvaccinated indoors but not others based on what happens to be politically convenient at the time is absolutely absurd and leads to a general sense of unfairness and annoyance among the public.
@Rochelle: yes but is there any consideration at all for businesses and workers livelihoods. You’ve left this important variable out. The dilemma is to get businesses open, people in work while trying to protect the health of the general population as best we can. What is your alternative solution that checks those boxes?
If you chose not to get the vaccine I have no sympathy for you. But what’s the difference d
Between an unvaccinated 16 or 17 year old that can go in while a 19 or 20 year old who hasn’t got a vaccine yet can’t?
@Ronan O’Keeffe: trying to make sense of it, good luck with that.
Imagine the people who for reasons of not being able to take the vaccine for medical reasons…
For people who have legitimate concerns about the rushed method in which this was brought out & of its effectiveness against new strains…
For people who were very concerned about a government proposal to spy & inform in your neighbours if they were breaking restrictions ..
A government who has locked up an elderly lady for 3 months for not wearing a mask while in England they are set to announce that masks are no longer required everywhere.
Good luck trying to make sense of this arbitrary discrimanatory legislation from a government who having giving themselves 3 pay raises during Covid & tell us we are all in it together.
@Hear me now: as they deliver more broken promises then run up the stairs without having to take any questions.
& for anyone who questions this mess or doesn’t go along with the general narrative they are mocked… ridiculed…called anti-vaxxers… conspiracy theorists…
Never be afraid to challange the status quo _ always ask questions…do not just nod & accept.
Be good everyone…Hopefully tomorrow will be better than today.
Rant over.
@Ronan O’Keeffe: because we decided – ages ago – that 18 was the start of adulthood. With all the rights and responsibilities and requirements to abide by the rules that come with being an adult.
@EvieXVI: we also decided – ages ago – that discrimination is totally unacceptable and should not be tolerated in any developed, civilised society, but hey-ho here we are.
@Eoin Jackson: that depends on your definition of discrimination. When a decision is made for the common good and a law introduced for the common good then this is not discrimination. The needs of the many outweigh the wants of the few. That’s how society works.
But its ok to bring them into the Hotel Bar and not the Bar up the street.. has Professor Tony giving a Logical difference between a Hotel bar and a bar next door..
This latest ‘concession’ raises more questions.
If asymptomatic children can still pass on the virus as we have been told then surely this latest move by the government is totally irresponsible?
This decision has nothing to do with COVID. Just a weak government looking for brownie points.
@Will: That’s exactly it, it’s a decision made purely for optics. They’ll claim they’re mostly following the health advice but also listening to the public.
In reality this is the worst outcome for the public since the virus will spread more among unvaccinated children and staff in indoor dining and many young people will be prevented from dining indoors.
We need a government with the courage to pick a lane on issues like this.
@Rochelle: what’s the alternative. Those kids are not in school at present and are in a protective bubble at hime with their vaccinated parents. Chances are any socialising they are doing during the height of Summer is outdoors. Simple. It’s a huge conspiracy theory after all.
“we need to trust people” – yeah when it comes to this one specific detail, everything else it’s just lock it down to stop people doing it. Talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Not a chance that will happen. It will be pushed out 2/3 weeks and then it will be decided to wait for a few weeks to allow schools to reopen and then your into October at which time cases will be high (which wont mean anything with majority vaccinated) but it will put off until next year.
@Roisin Lyons: you should ask all the people who were outraged last week at the prospect of not being allowed to dine indoors with their kids who are not eligible to be vaccinated yet. This was a decision based on public pressure
So. I have chosen not to get the vaccine at the moment for my own personal reasons. I have bent over backwards to make sure I complied with all the restrictions since day 1. I am a young healthy person, BUT anyone who caught the virus can avail of this now luxury. You are now being rewarded a license for being covid positive. If I had of known that I’d be out with the masses having raves and pints and drinks with everyone
@Alexandra Molloy: you should be glad that everyone else is getting vaccinated to protect you, and happy enough to eat and drink outdoors for a few weeks or months so that enough people are vaccinated that you won’t need to worry about it
No that you can get a meal and a pint indoors can the government let non essential workers have driving lessons and start getting more driving tests done
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