A judge has directed on Friday that the Carrickmines Green Owners Management Company consent to the sale of 15 apartments in the south Dublin development despite outstanding issues around defects.
The case was brought by John McStay, receiver for the National Assets Managment Agency (Nama) and Judge James O’Donoghue in the Circuit Civil Court ordered the management company to execute all necessary documents so the sales can be completed.
Carrickmines Green is a 235-unit development to which people began moving in about 2008, just as the Celtic Tiger building boom was coming to a halt.
The original developer, Laragan Developments, went bust and Nama took over the estate and appointed receiver McStay Luby to run Carrickmines Green on its behalf.
The development had not been completed and was only finally finished in 2020. In the meantime, a number of big fire safety defects were uncovered.
Following requests from the management company McStay Luby appointed fire safety consultants to carry out a full audit of the building. This highlighted further defects and the receiver agreed to have remedial work done to address the problems.
When this was completed the receiver wanted to hand over the completed development to the management company which would allow for the sale of the remaining apartments.
However, the owners were not satisfied all the defects had been addressed and appointed another consultant to review the defects.
The resulting report highlighted further defects and the owners wanted these addressed before taking full control of the developments.
McStay Luby is claiming it is not the developer and has fulfilled and even gone beyond its responsibilities as the receiver of the developer’s loans.
The case has been closely watched by owners of up to 100,000 apartments built during the Celtic Tiger era which were left with defects.
An expert group report published last July said the cost of remediating the defects could be as high as €2.8 billion.
An interdepartmental group is currently devising a system by which apartment owners can be recompensed. Many of the developers that were operating during the building boom subsequently went bust with their loans having been taken over by Nama.
Judge O’Donoghue said there was no longer any meaningful doubt that the positions of the receiver in the case were correct.
The judge was told on Friday that the court’s decision, one way or the other, would inevitably be appealed by one party or the other to the High Court and he granted a stay of two weeks on his order to facilitate preparation for such an appeal.
