Hundreds of Dublin homes are potentially at risk of damage following the partial collapse of a house in Inchicore into the river Camac earlier this month, a senior Dublin City Council engineer has said.
Ellen Blehein (32) and her husband Robert (30) had to move out of their home on Tyrconnell Street, Inchicore, last week after their garden wall and patio, along with the wastewater pipes attached to their house, collapsed into the river.
The executive manager at the council’s engineering division, Pádraig Doyle, told councillors on Wednesday while the authority had “formally no responsibility” for the issues, it was “very sympathetic to the circumstances of these particular people”.
The homeowners would have particular difficulty in effecting repairs as it would require access to their house from the river, said Mr Doyle. He was responding to a motion from Sinn Féin Cllr Ciarán Ó Meachair, supported by local councillors, to address the damage as a matter of urgency.
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“In this particular instance [we] took the stance that from flood prevention and public safety viewpoint we should do something, in so far as, if there was further collapse into the river that could lead to flooding upstream,” he said. “The decision was, on that basis, [to] go in and do emergency works.”
However, he said that while the council had “carried out an emergency response to this particular property, that does not mean we are taking responsibility for everything there”.
There were he said “possibly a few hundred houses” at similar risk. “This is potentially huge.”
The council, in collaboration with the Office of Public Works (OPW), would now have to assess the situation to determine the “legal position, the moral position and what is the funding available”, he said.
“There really is a decision to be made on where we go with this,” he added. “Once we decide to take responsibility to do one house are we potentially on the hook for hundreds of houses?”
The OPW “generally have a view of helping out people who are in trouble”, said Mr Doyle. But it would also have to consider the implications of taking action in this instance and what that might have for similar issues countrywide.
“There is the complexity there of once you do it are you setting precedent? If they do this are they suddenly finding themselves on the hook for Cork and Limerick and a hundred other places as well?”
[ Dublin couple fear their home will fall into Camac river after wall collapsesOpens in new window ]
The couple whose house is under emergency repair by the council has said they were aware of heightened flood risk when purchasing the house, but two engineers did not report any decay of the back wall which was about 2m high. It was only months after moving in that they began to notice cracks in their interior and exterior walls, with subsequent engineer reports finding that the house was tilting as the river wall decayed.
The couple said they then informed the council and sent it the reports that they had commissioned.
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