Amount Dublin City Council has had to pay out to its tenants for mould and damp in their homes has doubled

The amount that Dublin City Council has had to pay to its tenants due to mould and damp problems in their homes has doubled in the last two years, it says.

The council paid €533,411 in 2022 and €1,083,487 in 2023 as a consequence of legal judgements and settlements with Dublin City Council tenants due to damage done to their health or property by mould and damp, it says.

The council press office has not responded to a query sent on 9 May asking whether there has been a further increase in 2024 in payouts due to damp and mould, following a recent high-profile court case.

In November, Sinead Moran, who lives in the council’s Oliver Bond House in the Liberties, was awarded €8,000 by a Dublin Circuit Civil Court judge for having had to live with damp and mould for 10 years, according to the Sunday World.

“The court was told by barrister Peter Maguire that Ms Moran regularly had to paint and redecorate her home because of damp and black mould and throw out ruined clothes, a wardrobe, and a bed and mattress because of damp,” the article says.

Thomas Loomes, solicitor for Moran, has not replied to queries. But solicitor Peter Boyle said Friday that he thinks many more council tenants have strong cases they could take against the council, based on the mould and damp they are living with.

“If enough people contacted me, I’d take a class action,” Boyle said.

A long-standing, citywide problem

The council press office said it could not give details of how many recent payouts were for damage to belongings, versus how many were for damage to tenants’ health – or say which specific council housing they related to.

Also, in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act, the council declined to release any correspondence it holds related to these judgments and settlements.

So it’s unclear how many cases, related to what specific issues, in what specific council housing, were behind the payouts in 2022 and 2023.

But there have been longstanding mould and damp problems in council housing across the city. It’s a problem the council knows about and has again and again said it’s been working to address.

In 2017, members of the council’s housing committee agreed a motion from People Before Profit Councillor Tina MacVeigh to look at how to improve conditions in council housing, given health problems caused by damp. The council’s housing manager at that time said they knew about the problems, but needed more funding to address them.

In 2018, Ballybough House tenant Martin Heeney told of his battle against mould in his flat. And at a housing committee meeting that year, a council engineer said the council was working to address the mould and damp problems across its housing stock.

In 2019, Donna Collins talked about her six-year-old son’s struggles with asthma in their council flat in Glovers Court, near St Stephen’s Green. Asked about it, a council spokesperson said they were aware of “condensation issues” at the complex, and working on it.

And since then, the complaints and reports and promises to address the issue have only continued. Including at Oliver Bond, where Moran was living when she got the payout from the council for having to live with mould and damp.

A study released in January by the Robert Emmet Community Development Project and Trinity College School of Medicine showed that people living in Oliver Bond House are nearly twice as likely to have asthma as other people in the area.

No definite conclusion linking the mould and damp in Oliver Bond to the respiratory problems there can be made from the two studies, said Austin Campbell, CEO of the Robert Emmet CDP, a charity that runs a community hub across the road from the flats.

But “a range of academic studies suggest a direct correlation between higher incidences of asthma and poor physical environmental conditions”, he said.

Tackling the problem

The council has an ongoing programme for upgrading its housing, sometimes fixing up what’s there, sometimes knocking and rebuilding.

But those projects can take decades, and tenants in some of this housing are living with damp and mould and other problems in the meantime.

So the council tries to make fixes and upgrades to deal with that. But these are not always successful.

At a press conference at Oliver Bond in January, Joseph Little, head of building performance and construction at TU Dublin said the results of the council’s efforts to tackle damp and mould were patchy.

“I can tell you ventilation is being put in in the wrong place,” said Little “I have seen it.”

“The money is being spent, the workers are doing the work, and it’s not only not having an impact but even having the wrong impact,” he said.

A spokesperson for Dublin City Council said the council is aware of Little’s comments, and has asked him for specific examples.

“We use a number of expert ventilation companies who are very qualified in the work that they do,” she said.

Does the council have plans to change the way it approaches mitigating mould and damp, given the rising level of payouts?

The council will continue its efforts to add better insulation and ventilation to its housing stock, the spokesperson said.

“The City Council currently have a regeneration programme and a number of Energy retrofits which entails external insulation on our units,” she said.

“However given our large numbers of stock (over 28,000 [homes]) and the costs to bring the units up to standards, DCC will continue to install Mechanical ventilation as an interim measure,” she said.

However, “A common occurrence is to find vents stuffed with newspapers or old clothes to stop the drafts,” she said.

UPDATE: This article was updated on 16 May 2024 to include comments from Dublin City Council received after publication.