Housing Minister must engage immediately with owners of defective apartments – Seery Kearney

The Minister for Housing must engage immediately with owners of defective apartments whose concerns have been heightened by a fire incident at a building in the capital over the weekend, according to a Fine Gael Senator.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney said: “A fire which broke out yesterday at an apartment complex in Blanchardstown, where thankfully there was no reported injuries, has left some residents scrambling to look for alternative accommodation.

“Since then, apartment owners in my home constituency of Dublin South Central contacted me as they are extremely concerned.

“The fears for homeowners that I deal with on a constant basis is are they next? What would happen if their complexes had a similar incident?

“Government made the decision to fund remediation works to defective apartments and duplexes in early January of this year and yet much-needed monies to carry out remediation works are still tied up in the process to create a conduit for approvals and payments.

“Homeowners are completely frustrated with the creation of committees and processes when they need interim funding to get on with the necessary works to ensure safety in their complexes.

“Worried homeowners living in complexes with known defects are anxious and I would go so far as to say they are traumatised by yesterday’s fire. Everyone looks to their own situation and imagines the worst.

“Minister O’Brien needs to engage directly with homeowners and give them a definite timeline of when they will have the funds in their hands.

“Week after week campaigners like Sam and Odette Doran who represent the #NotOurFault Campaign and other residents of Park West in Dublin protest outside Leinster House seeking a timeline and urgent action, their experience is that the Minister lacks any sense of the emergency that this is to these families.

“These homeowners require clarity immediately and I have written to the Minister asking him to meet them as a matter of urgency.”