In Mulhuddart, 43 council-owned homes are sitting vacant

Many of the flats and houses around Parnell Estate were fully decorated for Christmas on Monday afternoon.

There were wreaths hanging outside doors, light-up reindeer on large window ledges and outside a few front doors, small red and white signs in potted plants saying things like “Santa Stop Here”.

There weren’t too many people around the Mulhuddart housing estate.

A father was playing with his child in a playground on the green. A young man in high-vis wandered about with a leaf blower in hand, cleaning up the fallen brown and yellow foliage.

While Parnell Grove had its fair share of the Christmas decorations, it also appeared to have a few vacant flats.

At street level, every few doors along gave the sense that nobody was living there. One had an excessive amount of junk mail and letters jammed into its post box. Another had all its curtains open and was completely empty inside.

A third seemed to be undergoing works, with a trolley full of construction materials visible through a plate glass door.

Throughout the estate, the council owns 162 apartments, and 43 are currently vacant, Fingal councillors were told at their most recent full council meeting on Monday 8 December, via  the Local Government Audit Service’s annual audit of the council for 2024.

Hearing there were dozens of flats sitting vacant bothered Solidarity Councillor John Burtchaell, he said. “In the teeth of a housing crisis, with a tsunami of notices of termination, I have a family with a court order to vacate their apartment on 20 December.”

These vacant units were necessary right now to re-house tenants from other parts of the estate, as Parnell Estate requires remediation works to fix structural problems in its buildings, like the presence of the mineral pyrite in concrete blocks, Paul Carroll, Fingal’s Director of Housing and Community Development said.

But for nine years, councillors have been flagging the issue of pyrite in the estate, with the Local Government Audit Service saying in its 2023 report that the council needs to get a move on with these upgrades fast.

Not a new issue

Councillors have been concerned that the estate’s buildings contained pyrite – a mineral which can cause defects, like cracks in the walls – since at least 2016, when Paul Donnelly, then a councillor, now a Sinn Féin TD, queried if it was present.

The council didn’t print a response in their minutes from the Castleknock/Mulhuddart area committee meeting at which he raised the question, on 3 November 2016.

But Donnelly, in March 2017, asked if the council had plans to remediate its pyrite issue, and whether there was a timeline in place. 

He was told in an official report that both the council and Respond, an approved housing body that manages apartments in the estate for the council,  had jointly issued proceedings in relation to the matter.

Two years later, in September 2019, Labour Councillor Breda Hanaphy asked Paul Reid, who was then chief executive of the council, if there was any timeline on those proposed works in the estate.

The council and Respond’s proceedings were still ongoing, Reid said, noting that Respond had lodged an application for funding to the Pyrite Remediation Board.

Of the eight flats in which pyrite was identified in the 2022 audit, the report notes that they needed to be fully assessed with remediation works conducted.

Pyrite remediation works were still progressing on houses owned by Respond, the 2023 audit says, noting that the council had, by this point, taken back control of the vacant units, standing then at 37 in total. “These apartments are still unoccupied,” it says.

A spokesperson for Respond said on Tuesday that the AHB currently has 93 homes on the estate, all of which are occupied. “All homes that were eligible to be included in the [Government’s] Pyrite remediation scheme have been remedied.”

The council had also commissioned fire-safety reports, and there were substantial works that needed to be conducted as well as those for the purpose of remediating the pyrite issue, it said. “These urgent works must be completed without delay.”

By the time the 2024 audit was shared with councillors on Monday 8 December, the vacant units stood at 43 apartments, which remained unoccupied, it said.

Substantial fireproofing works are required on all 162 council-owned apartments, as well as pyrite remediation works, but there had only been limited progress during the year, it said.

An end in sight?

There is a plan in place to bring all of these units back into social and cost-rental use, Carroll, Fingal’s director of Housing and Community Development, said. “The reality is that a number of the vacant units aren’t suitable for accommodation at the moment.”

Was there any indication when this process would be finished? asked the Mayor, Fine Gael Councillor Tom O’Leary.

The pilot programme is underway in one block, Carroll said.

This programme to upgrade the homes will be phased, a spokesperson for the council said on Tuesday.

“Following a range of architectural assessments and on-site building surveys, an initial pilot works contract is currently on-site which will establish detailed cost estimates and inform the detailed scope of works for the wider estate upgrade plan.”

Those upgrades will include fireproofing and possible pyrite remediation, they said, noting that it is likely to take a minimum of two years to complete.