In Ballymun, is there a problem with the sewage network?

The stuff in the bathroom was destroyed, says Mary O’Rourke. “All my towels, there was washing in the basket, clothes, my mats.”

Water had risen from her toilet, and flowed across her small bathroom and hallway and into her sitting room and kitchen.

And there it sat, a video shows, a sheet of water sopped into her carpets, and covering the plank-patterned lino floor of her home.

That flood was in April, said O’Rourke on 28 June, sitting on her couch in her ground-floor apartment at the bottom of the red-brick social housing that masses along Shangan Avenue in Ballymun.

The toilet had overflowed a year earlier too, she says – and she could tell it was going to happen again and had reported her concerns to Dublin City Council. But she feels that they haven’t taken it seriously, she says.

Workers come out, look down the shores, give her a drum of disinfectant and tell her to put it down, and leave, she says. “That’s all they do.”

O’Rourke doesn’t know what the underlying problem is – whether it is an isolated problem in her home, or a symptom of a wider issue with pipes and sewerage in the neighbourhood.

Some neighbours do also complain of blocked drains and rotten smells. “It’s across the area,” says People Before Profit Councillor Conor Reddy.

At the next North West Area Committee meeting, he plans to table a motion to ask for a report on sewage and draining issues across Ballymun, he says, and for some kind of survey to be done. “To get to the bottom of the problem.”

“It’s a very unpleasant thing to experience,” says Social Democrats Councillor Mary Callaghan, who has also helped tenants with sewage issues nearby on Whiteacre Crescent. “It’s unhygienic and unpleasant.”

A spokesperson for Irish Water said that wastewater crews from Irish Water and Dublin City Council carried out an investigation of the public wastewater and surface water network in the Shangan Avenue/Whiteacre Crescent at the weekend and found all the main drains to be working properly.

“No odours were detected and residents whom the crew spoke to did not report any odours,” they said.

A recurring problem

Last year, as the water rose to the top of the toilet, O’Rourke had called the council’s emergency maintenance line, she says.

Someone came, she says. “And he flushed the bloody chain and made it worse on me.”

In April, the toilet was blocked for four days and four nights, says O’Rourke, and she kept calling the emergency line and being told the request was passed on.

“I was constantly ringing,” she says, but when a guy came out, he said he had only gotten the message just before he came. By the time he came out, she and a neighbour had mopped up the water.

Dublin City Council’s tenant handbook says that tenants are responsible for plumbing repairs. But O’Rourke has never been told that she should get this fixed herself, she says.

Dublin City Council didn’t respond to queries sent Friday about O’Rourke’s case, and asking who is responsible for dealing with which kinds of sewage or drainage issues.

Private rental tenants can go to the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) if they’re unhappy with maintenance. But social-housing tenants can’t.

They can only ask the council again and again, and contact local councillors to push their cases – and maybe take a case with the ombudsman.

That’s frustrating, says O’Rourke. “They just don’t bother with you.”

In its May report, the Housing Commission said that this should change, and that council tenants should be able to file disputes with the RTB too.

A wider issue?

Reddy, the People Before Profit councillor, says complaints about sewage and drainage are frequent enough in Ballymun that there should be a closer look by the council at what is going on.

He plans to call for that at the next local area meeting, he says.

Over Shangan Avenue from O’Rourke’s home, Paula Paget says she has problems with drainage in her kitchen. “You turn the tap on, and you have to leg it, basically.”

Because of the smell, she says. “It’s just disgusting.”

The council did move her toilet in her bathroom five or six years ago to try to fix that but it did nothing, she says. “I still get the smell.”

Inviting people in for a cup of tea can be embarrassing, she says, and you can end up fleeing to the sitting room to eat your dinner.

“If there’s anyone finishing up after themselves, washing, you can’t eat. It puts you off your food. It’s rotten, disgusting,” she says.

Southwards where Shangan Avenue ends, Whiteacre Crescent begins.

Mary Callaghan, the Social Democrats councillor, said she has periodically helped a few tenants with sewerage issues on this street. “In those instances, there was sewage backing up, overflowing in gardens, smells in homes.”

She gets onto Irish Water and Dublin City Council. A crew is sent out to remove blockages, she says. But that only seems to fix the issue for a bit.

“There does seem to be an ongoing issue which makes it come back every few months,” says Callaghan. The last time was a couple of months ago, she says.

As she understands it, in that case, infrastructure is to blame. “There’s some technical issue with at least one pipe which makes it more prone to being blocked,” she says.

She has asked the council to look for a more permanent fix, says Callaghan, and it needs to happen.

Dublin City Council hasn’t replied to a query about whether they also think there is a pipe there that is prone to blockages.

Paul Dornan, a community solicitor at the Ballymun Community Law Centre, said they haven’t to date had council tenants contacting their service about sewerage and drainage issues.

But issues like that would potentially impact on the rights of tenants, he said. “And should anyone so wish they can contact Ballymun Community Law Centre for further information on how they can assert their rights and protections.”

O’Rourke, meanwhile, says she has put in a claims form to the council for the damage done to her belongings from the April flood, given the delayed call out.

Officials have told her that the emergency crew said they didn’t see any flood when they came out, she says. “But they only came out at 8pm that night, after all the water was swept out.”

She sent them the video of the aftermath but is yet to hear back, she says. “They’re just fobbing me off, to be honest.”