Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the contributors to this debate. I agree with much of what has been stated about the residual issues in the Multi-Unit Developments Act 2011. I deal with them routinely. I know of examples in various estates. Every management company is set up differently. A part of the problem is that there is no universal response, but that is also a reason not to make the situation worse, which is what I was trying to address in this Bill. The solution should not just be for people in the future but for what has already happened, nor should it compound the problem further.

People are having difficulties trying to get their estates taken in charge, to sell their homes and so on because management companies are impediments. When considering this matter, I gathered information and met a solicitor for a legal opinion. He stated that the definition was vague and conceivably included every housing estate and residential street in the country. However, he presumed that it meant that amenities, facilities and services were to be shared only between the residential units and not the wider public. In this sense, he stated that it was arguable that where the roads and services in an estate had been taken in charge, the estate was not a multi-unit development and where roads and services or any part thereof had not been taken in charge, it was such a development. I am not making this up. The solicitor in question is good on property law.

I also asked him to give me an opinion on another matter that had been cropping up and for which I wanted a solution. Winding down management companies is complex because they are not all the same. Getting every owner to sign a deed is difficult, as Deputy Coppinger mentioned, when there is a mixture of people in an estate. Some renters cannot get in contact with their landlords and some owners do not want to sign the deed and apply to a Circuit Court pursuant to section 24(5)(g) of the 2011 Act. These are not the kinds of actions people expect when winding up companies either voluntarily or by way of an order. A voluntary liquidation is expensive and a court-ordered liquidation is also to be avoided, given the expense of court applications and liquidators' fees. Striking a company off the register of companies would also be expensive. None of the solutions I considered was clear cut and residual problems had to be considered. This one small issue is about people not being snared by bills like those to which Deputy Coppinger referred. I know of people who are charged for lifts in buildings where there are no lifts.

Developers were delighted with the management company arrangement in the early part of the previous decade and took full advantage of it during the crash. Often, people in housing estates were paying for the maintenance of areas that used to be the responsibility of developers until those estates were taken in charge. Where we have managed to get a council to take an estate in charge, the management company is normally shrunk down to just the area around the apartment block while the rest of the estate - roads, water, etc. - is taken in charge. That one must even do this proves my point. By ignoring this problem, the Government is creating a legacy in the same way that people were ensnared.

I am shocked by the response of the Department and the Minister of State. I take his commitment to speak to the Minister at face value, but this is my fourth Bill. Only one, a planning Bill, has not been opposed so far. It was sent to the committee on which I sit. I met departmental officials who stated that they would include many of its measures in planning legislation which was forthcoming at the time, but nothing was included.

If that effort was made for something that was not opposed and where it was seen to have merit, what chance have I got in arguing here for something the Government totally opposes, despite seeing merits in it? That is the absolutely outrageous aspect of the response. I am inferring that this is intended but it should not and cannot be intended. People will arrive to a solicitor's office and do exactly the same thing as happened ten and 12 years ago. They will be told that unless they sign the document, they will not get the keys to the house. They will discover that there is a residual charge every year and it will be so legally complicated, it will be difficult to get out of it. This could cause problems when they seek to sell the property as even if the estate is taken in charge and the management company exists but is not functioning, there may be problems with title.

The Department does not get this but I hope the Minister of State does. I do not want to see people put to the pin of their collars trying to pay their mortgages and live their lives being asked to pay a bill that is unnecessary and with a legal arrangement that will cause all sorts of problems. It creates work for the legal sector in trying to unpick the issue. The Department does not seem really to understand what I was trying to say in putting forward this Bill, although I outlined when I introduced it on First Stage what it intended to do. To a great degree, this Friday session is just about fobbing us off. That is my experience, having put forward and debated four different Bills since the initiative's introduction. Nothing from those sessions has made it to the point of being enacted into law. It is all very well that this is outlined as an initiative in Dáil reform but it is not reform if there is no meaningful outcome.

I will take the Minister of State at face value and I hope he will revert with a proposed solution. This is a very real problem and it will affect people who do not even know it is a problem. This Bill cannot be allowed to gather dust and the issue should be dealt with in a timely way. I am not precious about my name being on anything, as long as the issue is resolved. It would not take much to do that if there is an acceptance that this matter needs resolution. Does the Department believe the matter needs such resolution?

See this speech in context