Article from the Sept. 2006 issue of the Socialist
newspaper of the Socialist Party, Irish section of the CWI

Housing

Council bloc vote retains management company

By Councillor Ruth Coppinger

FINGAL COUNTY Council has manoeuvered to keep a private management company in place in its major affordable and social housing project, Castlecurragh in Mulhuddart, Dublin.

Residents walked out of the management company AGM in anger when the two Directors (Fingal Council employees) used the Council’s 105 block votes to pass a budget clearly opposed by a majority of those present.

Residents have been in dispute on the issue for over 18 months, citing the fees as double taxation, with 400 out of 715 paying nothing at all. The Council itself deducts the fees from its own tenants. vFollowing a long campaign of residents and the active leadership of the Socialist Party on Fingal Council, a new policy on management companies was adopted in July and it was agreed to take Castlecurragh in charge.

However, a draft budget presented at the meeting contained a "common charge" of €223 on each house and apartment. When residents questioned the budget, the Directors proceeded to cast 105 votes on behalf of Council tenants – tenants who have no choice in paying these fees and no individual vote.

The Council is endorsing privatisation by refusing to maintain all the open spaces on the estate, as well as imposing a form of rates on low income households. The company is massively in debt and is threatening debt collection and interest charges on non-payers. However, residents have held firm.

The Minister for the Environment Dick Roche issued a circular in June which stated "under no circumstances should a planning authority require the establishment of a management company for… houses with individual private gardens", yet Fingal County Council is doing just this to people in affordable housing.

The Residents’ Committee will continue to organise to get the entire estate maintained and to dissolve the management company, except where legitimate for some apartment services.

Management companies – a developers’ dream

AS DUPLEXES, terraced houses and high-density mixed unit estates become more common, developers and/or councils are setting up management companies to offload maintenance costs onto the householder.

Generally, the developers take over the directorships and keep control of these companies. They are thus able to charge the new homeowner for maintaining and landscaping the estate – something the developer would have had to pay for many years before the local authority took over. The practice also suited councils, eager to pass over the cost of services they would traditionally have provided.

Management companies or some cooperative structure is needed to insure and maintain apartment blocks, but they have been slyly extended way beyond those services, levying landscaping, car-parking, lighting, cleaning and a myriad of other charges.

In Tyrrelstown, west Dublin, Socialist Party TD, Joe Higgins, unearthed and exposed that the management companies were charging residents for public lighting, but that it was actually being paid for and supplied by the council.

It was also Joe Higgins who, alongside Catherine Murphy TD, first raised this issue in Dail Eireann and brought it to national prominence. Ludicrously, the Taoiseach can - under pressure - bemoan that these fees are "unfair" and "unnecessary", yet they are continuing to be imposed with residents dragged to court while he looks on and does nothing!

Active groups of residents are now established in Tyrrelstown, Ongar, Balbriggan, Tallaght and many areas nationally fighting rip-off management fees. The Socialist Party will assist them and continue to campaign in the Dail, councils and estates to have this scandal ended.