Funding confirmed for long suffering local apartment owners 

Finally, there has been some good news for local owners of Celtic Tiger-era apartments with defects following several years of stress and uncertainty.  

Apartment owners in The Crescent Building in Park West are getting an early Christmas present of €10.8 million in government funding to fix the fire defects in their building.   

Just over two years ago they were shockingly informed at a meeting that each owner would have to pay €68,500 or the fire officer would close the building.  

They were told they would lose their insurance and mortgages, which obviously caused a large amount of stress for the owners, for something that was not their fault.  

The Crescent Building in Park West (pictured above) consists of 232 apartments and was built in 2003 by a third-party contractor, P.Elliot, as part of the Park West campus which was developed by Harcourt Developments.  

Crescent Building apartment owner, and member of the Not Our Fault Camapign, Odette Doran, told Southside People there is much relief among her and her fellow owners.  

“What motivated us to start the Not Our Fault Campaign was we simply could not afford to pay to fix the defects,” she said.  

“We joined with other developments who had fire defects and similar bills that they simply could not afford.   

Some of the members of the Not Our Fault group pictured with Senator Mary Seery
at a protest outside the Dail last summer.

“So, we stood outside Leinster house every Wednesday for almost a year and spoke to whoever would listen to us and raise it inside in the Dail and Seanad.   

“We have been selected as one of four developments as a pathfinder project to pave the way for other developments to follow.  

“On November 12, we had our annual AGM and we asked Senator Mary Seery Kearney to attend and to deliver the good news to the owners that we had €10.8 million in government funding.  

“This was well received by everyone in the room and to see the reaction and the joy on people’s faces the relief and the difference that two years can make thanks to her support of our campaign from day one.  

“Not only did she speak out about our development, she spoke of the many other homeowners throughout the country with fire defects up to 100,000 homes are affected by the Celtic tiger era of self certification.   

“We even did a 24hr protest outside the Dail and Senator Mary Seery Kearney organised the AV room for us to go in and show the types of defects that people were living with she even brought us out a pavlova and stayed up until midnight to congratulate us on finishing our 24hr protest.    

“So good news for everybody that this is the start of the remediation scheme and getting people’s homes safe again so they can get on with their lives.   

“We hope to be able to commence remediation works on The Crescent Building before Christmas and give other affected homeowners the hope that there is a scheme and help is on the way for them too.   

“We are not done yet we are still campaigning for MUD ACT reform and for a regulator to be put in place to try and make sure that people don’t end up in this kind of situation again as before we got the government to agree to the 100% redress people were being hit with levies to remediate the buildings themselves and this was not going to work and still won’t work as not everyone can afford these levies.   

“The ones that couldn’t pay them are being hit with interest and some have been before the courts as well so hopefully once people realise that there is now a scheme in place that we are hoping all that should stop.”