Mick Clifford: State left with the bill for a problem of developers' making
Micheal O'Reilly and Claire Ryan at The Oaks, Lakepoint, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath. Ms Ryan moved out of her apartment in 2019. By then, she was a mother and afraid of living with her daughter in an unsafe home. Photo Bob Morrison
The devil lurks in the detail of the apartment remediation scheme announced this week.
On Wednesday, the Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien stated that the scheme to repair and repay apartment owners for defective construction could cost up to €2.5bn. That level of redress has resulted in conniptions among some of the senior officials in the Department of Finance charged with looking after the State’s coffers.
More often than not when a scheme like this is announced, the estimated cost tends to creep, if not shoot, up as it goes along. For that reason, it will be interesting to observe how the legislation to give force to the scheme is drafted.
In the round though, the scheme is a huge step forward for homeowners whose lives have been blighted through no fault of their own. Over the last nine years the has reported on the plight of people who had bought their apartments in good faith, often at inflated costs, only to find that they were subsequently expected to dole out large sums of money to ensure that their home was made safe.
Claire Ryan was one such homeowner. She bought an apartment in The Oaks development in Mullingar in 2006 only to find later that there were major fire safety defects. Westmeath County Council brought the developer, Castlepride, to court for an enforcement order to remediate the faults.
The district court judge David Anderson said the matter was too serious for his court, that it should be kicked up to the Circuit Court where greater penalties could apply. “Are people’s lives in danger?” he asked the solicitor for the council. No reply was recorded in the court report.
Later, it came back to judge Anderson with word that the DPP was happy to proceed at district court level. Understandably the judge said no. The council did not pursue the matter thereafter. Everything was left as it was, the dangerous defects unresolved, the stress and fear of homeowners unaddressed.
Claire Ryan moved out of her apartment in 2019. By then, she was a mother and afraid of living with her daughter in an unsafe home.
Ms Ryan said:
"I am paying rent in another house because I couldn’t bear to live in it anymore. I can’t afford to buy again as I’m considered a second-time buyer and can’t sell the apartment because of the issues,” she told the last year.
At the time, the council and the developer declined to comment on queries submitted to it by this newspaper. This week she feels that the end of a long journey is in sight.
“I’m just delighted that there is a fund there now,” she says. “There are hundreds of questions that still have to be answered about it but the big thing is getting an acknowledgment that it is an issue. A lot of people are very relieved. I was getting a lot of messages last night after the announcement.”
Her story is not unique. An expert group set up by the government estimates that up to 100,000 apartments built between 1991 and 2013 may be defective through fire safety or structural faults or water ingress.
The fault for this lies entirely with both the developers who build these buildings and the State which was charged with regulating the construction. During the years of the frantic building boom corners were cut all over the shop. There was huge money to be made and everybody was in a mad rush to get a piece of the action.
If ever there was a time for a tight inspection regime of building practices this was it. Instead, the State turned a blind eye, as if too much probing might see the whole edifice come crumbling down ahead of the next election.
A crucial element of the scheme announced is retrospection. Homeowners who have already forked out large sums to make their homes safe are to be refunded. This is vital as the issue has been bubbling about for nearly a decade and anybody who could afford to get work done did so. They are entitled to redress as much as anybody else.
The first hint that there was a systemic issue came in 2014 when the reported on fire safety defects in the Longboat Quay development on the Dublin quays. The piece included details such as the deployment of fire marshals to ensure that the building could be evacuated in the event of a fire.
It was the first story about such major defects apart from the now infamous Priory Hall in north Dublin, which had resulted in an evacuation in 2011.
Priory Hall, we were all assured, had been an aberration. As far as the government and the development industry were concerned, it had been exception rather than rule. There wouldn’t, couldn’t, be any more Priory Halls. As it was to turn out, there were plenty more.
The initial reaction of the government of the day in 2014, a Fine Gael/Labour coalition, was to shrug shoulders. Nothing to do with us. That was the fault of the scuts in Fianna Fáil and their developer friends.
Opposition politicians, Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Broin and the Green's Catherine Martin organised committee hearings, resulting in a report, Safe As Houses, authored by Ó Broin in December 2017. That provided the blueprint for the way forward, including a redress scheme and robust building regulatory regime.
Still, the government baulked at the prospect of committing huge sums of money to a problem that was not of their making. That line persevered until the current administration came to office and the screaming injustice and political heat could no longer be brushed away.
Now, nine years after the road to remediation opened up, there is finally a concrete solution. During the interim, anybody who could scramble together the cost of making their home safe did so. Failing to recompense these people would compound the injustices already suffered.
On another level, it’s déjà vu all over again. Those who were primarily responsible have walked away. Following the 2008 crash, a whole host of developers were bust, but many of the principles involved are back in the game in new guises. Legally, they bear no responsibility for their past conduct.
The permanent and elected government from the years of excess have moved on, most of them to inflated pension entitlements. That leaves today’s citizens footing the bill for the recklessness and negligence. Some day maybe we will learn from this kind of debacle, but don’t hold your breath.
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