Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

A full 12 months have passed since Deputy Catherine Murphy and I first raised in Dáil Éireann the novel phenomenon of management companies being forced on householders in new housing developments, which is especially hitting first-time buyers. We outlined how this was a scam to benefit developers and, depending on which services might be turned over to them, to bring about the possible privatisation of public services. We gave shocking examples of a barefaced rip-off involving no less than six management companies running 1,700 houses in Tyrellstown, leaving aside 400 apartments, which did not even take over public services but almost exclusively built its structure on the management of open air car parking spaces in the estate for which, unbelievably, €360,000 per year is being demanded from the unfortunate householders. It is a cash cow for the developers and the managing agents who take one third of that money each year. I recently exposed a barefaced swindle in Tyrellstown, where €17,000 per year was being demanded from the same householders in fees for public lighting. However, I have established conclusively that Fingal County Council met all the lighting and maintenance costs for the past five years.

Over the past year, the developers in that and other estates, masquerading as management companies, have been trying to drag dozens of householders into court to force them to pay fees which are being boycotted. Happily last Thursday, Judge Alan Mahon in the Circuit Court quashed a demand for management company fees on legal grounds, the important implications of which we are still studying.

The Taoiseach said, in response to the concerns expressed by me, Deputy Catherine Murphy and others, that management companies in housing estates were never envisaged, represented a major problem and an unnecessary cost, and were totally wrong and highly unfair, yet he has not lifted a finger to stop the practice. How serious was the Taoiseach, given that he was in Tyrellstown last Wednesday evening not to extend solidarity to hard-pressed residents, but to open a €40 million hotel for the very developer who is at the heart of the management company rip-off and who has been dragging householders through the courts? Local people who tried to attend the bash were turned away from their supposedly local hotel.

When will the Taoiseach introduce legislation to control management companies for apartment owners and what will he do to quash the ones that exist for thousands of householders who are now caught in a legal nightmare not of their making?

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