Sir, – Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan continues to refuse to meet the residents of Priory Hall to discuss both the many failures of government surrounding this debacle and the solutions to resolving it. It is time he ceased hiding behind the courts in an attempt to avoid this issue. As he should be well aware the residents are not before the courts nor are any solutions to Priory Hall before the courts.
His department is currently working on new legislation relating to building controls. Unfortunately, from the few public statements he has made regarding Priory Hall, he appears to be startlingly clueless as to the reality of the current building control regime. This does not bode well for the likelihood that he will pass comprehensive new legislation.
Perhaps if he spoke to a small group of residents who have lived through the current “robust” building controls it would assist him in drafting new legislation.
In October the Minister stated at a conference of chartered surveyors: “The fact that Dublin City Council did their job properly and brought this particular individual to court is a clear indication that the Building Control Act is robust”. I would like to clarify the residents’ view of Dublin City Council’s job performance to date.
Dublin City Council as the building control authority carried out no building control inspections prior to the development being occupied.
Despite clear warning signs that there were problems with the development, such as the Health and Safety Authority action in the High Court in 2006, where Priory Hall was described as “one of the most unsafe sites” the inspector had ever visited, the council chose not to carry out its own inspections.
Dublin City Council as the fire safety authority carried out no fire safety inspections prior to the development being occupied. In addition, despite being aware of the problems in 2009, when it moved its own tenants out, 256 residents including 87 children were left living in severe risk to their lives for almost two years in a development so dangerous that chief fire officer Donal Casey told the president of the High Court a fire could spread throughout an entire block within minutes.
Dublin City Council is the housing authority which in early October 2011 went to the High Court, with no advance notice to the residents, and requested that the court immediately make 256 people homeless with no thought to how those residents’ lives would be impacted.
I would also suggest that if the word that springs to the Minister’s mind when he discusses the current building controls is “robust” it may be time to consult a dictionary.
Finally, in late January he stated, in the Dáil, that the council “has brought the developer, on behalf of the residents, to book”. Once again his statement only highlights how uninformed he is of the situation. To date Tom McFeely has not served a day in prison, nor paid a cent of his fine, for his part in the Priory Hall debacle. The council, in fact, chose not even to contest Mr McFeely’s request for a stay on his sentence in the Supreme Court, a decision Chief Justice Denham herself described as “extraordinary”. This left Mr McFeely free to sneak off to the UK to declare bankruptcy only two days before he was due to be adjudicated a bankrupt in Ireland. Mr McFeely will be out of bankruptcy on January 13th, 2013 and free from his obligations regarding Priory Hall. Unfortunately the residents cannot avail of such an easy escape.
It is time for the Minister to stop making inane, uninformed statements, to sit down with the residents to learn the reality of what has happened, to work with us to find a solution to Priory Hall and to ensure that no other citizen of this country is forced to endure what we have lived through over the last four months. – Yours, etc,