Residents of council’s Oliver Bond flats worry they’ll be left for decades more with mould, damp and related health problems

The damage from damp, and the creeping mould, are visible on Friday afternoon inside a well-kept two-bed apartment in the council’s Oliver Bond House flat complex.

By the window in the bathroom, near the window in the kitchen. From under the sink there’s a musty smell of mould.

A few minutes later, inside another flat nearby, Julie Barry is sitting on the couch in her living room, light pouring in from the window behind her.

She says she’s had problems with mould too, on and off since she moved into Oliver Bond in 2005.

The problems are widespread across this sprawling complex just down the hill from Thomas Street, on the south side of the River Liffey. Built in the 1930s, there are nearly 400 flats in 16 blocks – and over 1,200 people live here.

And loads of them have mould and damp, a 2021 survey found. Of those who responded to the survey, more than 82 percent said they had those problems.

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

Sitting forward on her couch on Friday, hands clasped on her lap, Barry says her three children – now 22, 17 and 11 – suffered respiratory problems growing up.

“They would constantly have sore throats and coughs,” she says. “Two girls and a boy, all in the one bedroom.”

No definite conclusion linking the mould and damp in Oliver Bond to the respiratory problems there can be made from the two studies, says 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 by email.

“Abnormally poor conditions … and abnormally high levels of respiratory ill health would appear to be linked in the case of Oliver Bond House,” Campbell said.

Asked about the studies on mould and on respiratory ill health, the possible link, and what it is doing to address the issues, a spokesperson for Dublin City Council said it is working on a plan to redevelop Oliver Bond House.

While that’ll take a while, the council in the interim “has been undertaking works to improve living conditions of the residents”, the spokesperson said.

Gayle Cullen Doyle, chairperson of the Oliver Bond residents group, said Friday the regeneration of the flats needs to move faster.

The council spokesperson didn’t give a time frame for completing the regeneration, but Cullen Doyle said she believes it’ll take at least two decades.

“The times that we’re living in now, people shouldn’t be living like this,” she said, sitting in Julie Barry’s flat, next to her on the couch.

The mould and damp problems

Cullen Doyle, the chair of the neighbourhood group, says that as she remembers it there weren’t big problems with mould and damp in Oliver Bond until after a previous regeneration.

“Years ago, the woman that lived underneath, she had nine children – and that’s only a one-room flat, no bedrooms – raised nine children and it wasn’t a bother, no dampness, no nothing,” Cullen Doyle said.

“So when they came and did the regeneration 30-odd years ago it must have been Mickey Mouse or Fred Flintstone, because they just came and said they’ll be happy with new windows and new this and – and we were!” she said.

But, first of all, living through the work was rough. “We were actually put into our bedrooms to live while they were drilling and pulling walls down,” she said. “Loads of people had even worse stuff going on with their lungs” than now.

And also, once the work was done, in the better-sealed homes, with more moisture and poorer ventilation, mould and damp became a serious problem, Cullen Doyle says.

“They put in better-insulated windows, radiators, showers, they didn’t put vents in, there’s nowhere to dry washing outside in winter,” she said.

Deirdre Smith, the coordinator for the Oliver Bond House regeneration effort, who is sitting on a chair across the room from Cullen Doyle and Barry this Friday afternoon, nods her head.

“I don’t think they took into account the whole central heating thing, and how much that was going to affect moisture levels,” Smith says.

“And you know maybe looking after yourself and showering a bit more often and personal hygiene and cooking and stuff, I think that just wasn’t taken into account,” she said.

These are small apartments, too, and often overcrowded – and, of course, more people means more moisture.

The government’s July 2023 design standards for new apartments say the minimum floor area for a two-bed with four people in it should be 73 square metres.

Two-beds in Oliver Bond are 47 square metres to 52 square meters, according to a council presentation on the planned regeneration. And they often house more than four people.

Building materials can also help create and perpetuate mould and damp problems, said Joseph Little, head of building performance and construction at TU Dublin, on Tuesday.

The blocks at Oliver Bond House have solid walls, which conduct heat quite well, he said, instead of serving as a barrier separating the warmth inside and the cold outside on a winter day.

When the warmth and moisture inside hit a cold wall, condensation can form, Little said, speaking at a press conference at Oliver Bond House about the new report on respiratory problems.

Not only that, but the plaster inside is often made of gypsum, which is “food for mould” and can become “impregnated with mould” leading to recurring mould problems, Little said. In contrast, lime plaster or cement plaster kills mould, he said.

Since these buildings are of historical interest, designed by architect Herbert Simms, the plans for the regeneration would be to keep the exteriors – but increase apartment sizes by changing the interior, knocking flats together.

The regeneration plans also include a range of other changes that the council says should address the damp and mould issues in the complex.

“As part of the redevelopment of the existing homes, all homes will receive thermal upgrades to include both external & internal insulation, controlled ventilation & heat pumps while their sizes will be increased to meet the current space standards,” the council spokesperson said.

“These interventions will provide spacious, warm, dry & healthy homes,” they said.

Barry worries that the planned works on the blocks won’t really solve the problems with damp and mould, she says. “If it’s still the same building, will we still have the same problems?”

But, even if the works do solve the problems, they’re not going to be done for years and years. Probably decades.

Interim measures

In the meantime, the council is trying to improve conditions for residents, the spokesperson said. “The City Council is very aware that our aging stock needs to be modernised.”

When residents move out, the council refurbishes the empty flats – or “voids”, in council-speak – before a new tenant moves in, the spokesperson said. “Over the last 6 years 96 number of the 391 units have been refurbished.”

Also, to tackle the damp and mould problems across the complex, the council has been working to install vents with fans that push moist air outside.

“We surveyed all of the units for Mechanical Ventilation and installed vents in 212 units along with the 96 voids that would bring our total up to 308 units,” the spokesperson said.

Of the remaining flats, 49 tenants refused to have vents put in, and there’s 34 other flats where the council hasn’t been able to “gain access”, they said.

Barry, sitting on her couch, says she got mechanical ventilation put into her flat last year.

“They put one in my bathroom, and they put one in my bedroom,” she said. They also wanted to put one in her kids’ room but she refused because the vents are noisy and she didn’t want it to keep them awake, she says.

“The noise, it keeps you awake. It keeps me awake at night time,” Barry said. The mould has started to come back again, despite the vents.

Cullen Doyle, the chair of the residents association, says her new vents have been more effective, have kept the mould and damp at bay in her own flat.

“The only thing is it’s affecting my sleep because I’m a light sleeper. I do think it’s the washing machine on, on a spin,” she says. “It’s after helping getting the dampness out for me, but it’s affecting my sleep.”

The mixed results of the council’s installation of vents in Oliver Bond House flats could be due to the way they’re installed.

“I can tell you ventilation is being put in in the wrong place,” said Little, of TU Dublin, at the press conference on Tuesday. “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,” Little said.

In addition to the vents, the council is doing dry-lining around stairwells and flats that are on the outside of the buildings, says Smith, the regeneration coordinator.

“But a lot of people are actually refusing to let them in because it’s causing upheaval in their home, it’s taking away vital space, and then the problem could come back,” she said.

The council is also looking at replacing single-glazed windows with double-glazed, the council spokesperson said. “We currently have surveyed 12 blocks and will start the tender process as soon as surveys are complete,” they said.

One thing the council isn’t doing but Cullen Doyle and Barry say they wish it would, is sorting out the empty old garbage chutes.

Tenants used to be able to drop their rubbish down these tubes on the outside of these buildings instead of carrying it downstairs. But they’re closed up years now, just sitting there empty, damp and cold, they say.

“The main people that are suffering [from damp and mould] are the ones living beside them,” Cullen Doyle says. “Like Julie.”

Julie Barry, sitting next to her on the couch, nods. She says she moved into this flat in 2009, and there wasn’t a mould problem at first. “And then when they locked the chutes up – straightaway, mould.”

If the council would tear out the chutes, it’d hopefully improve the mould situation – and also create a precious bit more space in the small flats whose walls they run through, she says.

The regeneration

The process of redeveloping Oliver Bond House – the long-term solution to the damp and mould problem here – hasn’t got very far yet.

The council has applied to the Department of Housing for funding to do up three of the 16 blocks, amalgamating flats there to make bigger ones – and to make up for the flats lost in that process, to build a new blocks with 12 homes in it, according to a report delivered to the full council at its monthly meeting in early January.

In the first quarter of 2022, the department gave that application “stage 1 approval”, according to a Department of Housing report for the third quarter of 2023 on social housing construction.

There are five stages to get through to get final approval for doing up just those first three blocks, says Smith, the regeneration coordinator. And there’s the other 13 blocks to think about too.

“They say it’ll be a 10- to 15-year process but look at St Michael’s Estate,” Smith says. That regeneration in Inchicore was announced in the 1990s and still isn’t complete.

Cullen Doyle says residents want to see the Oliver Bond House regeneration move forward faster than that – and faster than it is now.

At the press conference on the football pitch at Oliver Bond House on Tuesday, another resident, Natasha O’Keefe, took the mic and spoke about the mould she’s fighting.

In the 2021 survey, nearly 45 percent of respondents said that a medical practitioner had told them that damp, mould, or sewage was contributing to ill health in their family, O’Keefe said.

She is among them, she said. “I suffer breathing issues and my doctor has told me that damp and mould in my flat are contributing to it.”

At the press conference, Cullen Doyle said residents need the regeneration to happen faster. “We need action now,” she said. “We hate living in these horrible conditions.”