Residents left in limbo following storm damage to homes

Several residents in the ‘West’ area of the city have been left in limbo after tens of thousands of euro of damage was caused to their homes during the Christmas storms.

On Christmas Eve, corrugated steel from a shed on the site of the former Connacht Laundry blew onto four houses on St John’s Terrace, damaging roofs, windows and fences.

However, the City Council cannot remove the debris from private property, and the new owner of the laundry site is not known.

Residents now fear they will have to launch legal action to track down the site owner and make them pay for the damage which was caused to the houses.

The building had been owned by developers Noel Burke and John Staunton, but was put in receivership by Danske Bank in 2009 and was subsequently sold last summer to an unknown buyer.

Cormac Lawless, whose mother Kathleen lives on St John’s Terrace said: “The problem is the debris goes from private to public to private property. The Council is not insured to go onto private property.

“The sheet of corrugated steel is intertwined and interconnected between the houses, so if we tried to clear it up ourselves, we could cause damage to the neighbours’ houses.

“Already, there are windows damaged, and in one of the other houses, the roof is badly damaged.

“Even if the Council were allowed to carry out repairs, I don’t think they’d be able to; it looks like a specialist job, and you’d need a crane.

“Who’s going to pay for the damage? Who’s going to clean the mess up? Nobody can tell us anything,” said Mr Lawless.

He said his family and his mother’s neighbours may now be forced to seek legal advice in an attempt to track down the owners of the laundry site.

Mayor of Galway, Cllr Padraig Conneely said he had advised the residents that they may have to pursue a legal route to identify the new owners of the Connacht Laundry site and to receive compensation for the damage done.

“It’s not good enough that the residents are left in this situation without being able to find out who is responsible,” the Mayor said.