A march took place yesterday marking a year since the Priory Hall apartment complex was evacuated because it is unsafe.
More than €2 million has been spent by Dublin City Council on the Priory Hall apartment complex since it was evacuated due to safety concerns one year ago.
Among the marchers were 300 angry residents who were forced to move out of their homes in the north Dublin building after officials deemed it unsafe to live in.
They marched from Donaghmede Shopping Centre to Priory Hall.
Before the rally, resident Darren Kelly said the demonstration would remind authorities of the despair 65 families have been forced to endure, after developer Tom McFeely built the complex with serious safety defects.
“We’re hoping to refocus minds,” said Mr Kelly. He said many of those concerned had been left in limbo, saddled with mortgages for a home they cannot live in.
Residents are in the middle of a mediation process with Dublin City Council and the financial institutions involved.
Mr Kelly, his wife and two small children are living in temporary accommodation in Belmayne.
Mr Kelly said it was “difficult to understand” how he and his family were still in the temporary accommodation one year on. “We thought it was going to take a few months to repair Priory Hall initially, it feels like our Government is forgetting about us. From the beginning all we wanted was a safe home,” he said.
Priorty Hall apartment owner Philip McManus said: “We’ve contacted the bank time and time again and they absolutely refuse to give us a moratorium….we’re paying [for] a property that we don’t know if we’ll ever be able to move into”.
It emerged yesterday that €2 million has been spent by Dublin City Council on the Priory Hall apartment complex since it was evacuated due to safety concerns one year ago.
Half of the money has been spent on the accommodation costs of almost 100 residents evacuated on October 14th last, and almost €700,000 has been spent on security for the vacant complex.
Residents of the north Dublin apartments were evacuated by order of the High Court until remedial work to address fire safety and other problems was completed.
The work was initially undertaken by the estate’s developer, Mr McFeely, but he was ordered off the site by the court on November 4th, on the application of the city council, which was not satisfied with the work being carried out.
The council was ordered by the court to cover the accommodation costs of the evacuated residents. The residents, a mix of home owners and tenants, were initially accommodated in hotels but were subsequently moved to rented housing.
Until this week the council had spent €2,136,943 on Priory Hall. This covered the cost of temporary lettings for all owner-occupiers, storage costs and security costs. It also includes money given to cover the cost difference between rents in Priory Hall and higher rents being paid by tenants evacuated from the complex who were in receipt of rent supplement.
The rental of apartments for the past year has cost the council €620,039. This is less than the council has spent on security for the empty buildings, which has so far cost €697,962.
In addition to renting apartments the council has spent €396,460 on hotel accommodation. Most of this cost was incurred late last year in the weeks after the residents were evacuated.
However, one resident continues to stay in an unnamed Dublin hotel. A spokesman for the council said this cost was not significant.
The next largest cost relates to surveying, and engineering and fire safety consultancy work, which now totals €335,616. Salaries have cost the council €10,624. Miscellaneous costs, largely related to the storage of the residents’ possessions, have amounted to €76,242.
The council is appealing to the Supreme Court the order requiring it to cover the accommodation costs.
Residents’ spokesman and Priory Hall homeowner Graham Usher said life continued to be extremely difficult for the residents, who felt left in limbo.
“The council’s Supreme Court case is hanging over the residents’ heads. That will be D-Day for the residents, because the possibility is that then, in addition to their mortgage problem, they’ll have a rent problem,” he said.
Families initially relieved to have secured a moratorium on their mortgages are now seeing their debt mounting.
“A lot of families got what they thought would be short-term moratoriums. That was fine when it was looking like they’d be back in within three months, but a year on that mortgage is just getting bigger and bigger. It’s added about €15,000 to most mortgages,” said Mr Usher.
The condition of the buildings has got progressively worse over the year, he said.
A resolution process chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Mr Justice Joseph Finnegan and involving banks and residents is ongoing.