Almost 300 families in Dublin's docklands who face evacuation from their apartments, which are a fire hazard, should resolve the issue "collaboratively" with the receiver of developer Bernard McNamara, who built the apartments, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said.
Mr Kenny said it was for the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, the nominal landlord of the Longboat Quay buildings, and for the receiver to the developer, the families themselves and Dublin Fire Brigade to "resolve this collaboratively".
He was responding to Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald, who raised the issue after being alerted by a young woman with two children. The woman learned only on Tuesday that she might be evacuated from her home within a week because the apartments are “fire traps”.
Some 298 families in the complex have been asked to pay €18,000 each, or €4 million in total, to deal with fire-protection issues, or else face evacuation. Ms McDonald said remedial work carried out to date had cost the docklands authority €1.2 million.
Not built properly
The owners had bought their properties for between €250,000 and €600,000, but they were not built properly.
“They do not meet fire safety standards, yet the developer, the builders, the architects and the planning authority will not be penalised, and it is the owners who are being asked to foot the bill,” Ms McDonald said.
She asked the Taoiseach where the necessary legislation was to provide homeowners and taxpayers with the protection they needed.
She also asked Mr Kenny whether he would contact Mr McNamara, a former multimillionaire, who, she said, “having run up debts of €2 billion during the boom, is now, I understand, debt free and back in the property business”.
‘Different story’
Mr Kenny said he would have to find out the details of the issue before he contacted anybody. He added: “If I did contact him, he would have a different story to tell.”
The Taoiseach later told the Dublin Central TD that Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly had directed that a review be undertaken to develop a framework that would apply in future cases of this kind.
He said the review would be undertaken by a steering group chaired by former manager of Cork County Council Martin Riordan and involving representatives from Kildare County Council and the Department of the Environment as well as an independent fire safety expert.
But Ms McDonald asked where the legislative remedy was. “The law is insufficient and has left these people in the circumstances they are in.”
She asked where was the legislation to prevent families being left in fire traps “with big demands of cash made on them”. She added that there were no mandatory inspections and that certificates were granted based on plans.
Mr Kenny said that because of “over-enthusiasm” during the building boom in “the so-called Celtic Tiger years, nobody policed the quality of the building that went into these houses”.
