Mr. Andrew Prior:

My personal experience as a homeowner and now a reluctant landlord - some people call us accidental landlords - primarily concerns my duty of care towards my tenants. I have been living in Ireland for 29 years but I am originally from Bradford, which unfortunately has a history with fire as the committee members probably know. I am acutely aware of the dangers of this kind of thing. I also work in the hospitality industry, where one is constantly aware of the danger of fire. It is not so bad now, but at the start it was quite an emotional stress to have tenants relying on me to ensure that their living quarters were safe. It is fair and reasonable for them to expect that. There was no real advice from the management agency. In fairness, it was all new to the agency as well. At the time we had no engineers who had done any detailed work. It is quite a considerable stress to know that there could be a fire and one might not be protected. In fact, we did not take any tenants with children after that.

The financial stress is even worse, but that does not affect the tenants who live there. The cost roughly amounts to €220 to €250 per month for the past 30 months. We have had to budget to pay for that. It is a hardship, but I can afford it. There are families that definitely cannot. It is not that they will not pay; they cannot do so. That makes it all the harder for the rest of us, because we do not have enough money to complete the works. The fire officer, who I believe is an arm of the State, says we have to fix this or action will be taken. I assume this action will mean people cannot live there. It is difficult for all of us. I do not live there so I do not see it from day to day. There have been eight fires in the complex in the past four years. Each time I read about those I am worried and wonder which block it took place in. Beacon South Quarter is probably one of the biggest complexes in the country. It includes 890 apartments. It is probably very complex to run.

In the initial stages after we found out about the defects, there was massive mistrust. The National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, was also somewhat involved. There was a breakdown in relations between the management company and the constituent body of private individual owners. We basically thought this was a conspiracy to make us pay for other people's mistakes. That could still be the case, but I very much doubt it. There was a breakdown of trust in the relationship. I was in the "will not pay" camp for a long time, feeling that this was totally unjust. That did not go well. For two years the problem stagnated. Even so, we have probably been more pragmatic than most in that we found the problem and now we are starting to fix it. There are developments out there where people are only just finding their problems. They are absolutely astonished at the scale of what people got away with. Somebody deliberately chose not to install fire-stopping above the corridor door outside my apartment. That is scandalous. An individual deliberately made that decision. That individual is probably still working in the construction industry. How long will this be allowed to continue? We hear that apartments are still being built shoddily. It is just not fair. That is pretty much all I have to say.