Report called for the demolition of flats as council says Noonan's Rd buildings 'are not unsafe' 

AN unpublished report from December 2022 found “major structural defects” in local authority housing on Noonan’s Road and St Finbarr’s Road, and recommended the complete demolition of the buildings.

The report, which encapsulates two surveys outsourced to private firms and a follow-on survey carried out by Cork City Council, strongly recommends that the 60-year-old social housing flats be demolished and rebuilt.

The internal report, which has been seen by The Echo, found: structural cracks in each of the apartment blocks; the connections anchoring the roofs to the masonry walls are “insufficient”; the connections between internal and external walls are “insufficient”; and a lack of mortar in the masonry of half of the buildings.

Despite the existence of this eight-month-old report, the chief executive of Cork City Council, Ann Doherty, last week visited Noonan’s Road and St Finbarr’s Road and told tenants she was “shocked” by the living conditions .

Ms Doherty also told tenants she was waiting on a report on the future of the flats which, she said, was due this coming September. The internal December report was not mentioned.

When asked by The Echo why council tenants on Noonan’s Road and St Finbarr’s Road were not immediately informed that a council report stated that the roofs on their buildings were not sufficiently connected to the walls, and the external walls were not sufficiently connected to the internal walls, a spokesperson for Cork City Council said: 

“It is important to note that the buildings at Noonan’s Road are not unsafe.”

The council spokesperson said the report had been prepared “as part of the most recent 2021 Energy Efficiency Retrofit Programme application the Cork City Council has been working with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to secure funding approval for a significant and complex energy efficiency programme upgrade for the units at Noonan’s Road”.

The spokesperson said the report was “an internal draft report circulated to key staff in the housing directorate” and the cost of the various surveys in the report could not be detailed, due to commercial sensitivity.

The spokesperson said the contents of the December 2022 report would inform the report on the future of the Noonan’s Road and St Finbarr’s Road flats due in September of this year.

Cork City Council’s spokesperson said: “The council is very aware of the sensitivities in this case, and as Noonan’s Road and adjacent units are occupied and are people’s homes, any possible actions need to be fully scoped and understood to allow proper consultation and engagement before any works commence given the likely disturbance and impacts involved. This process is critical as the issues involved are challenging and complex.”

The December 2022 report contains the findings of a structural survey of the council properties, carried out by John Quigley and Associates Consulting Engineers and DJF Consulting Engineers, as well as a subsequent council survey, and a cost estimate of repairs to the flats, evaluated by Tony O’Regan Quantity Surveyors.

The report notes that the flats were built in the 1960s and had an “initial design life” of 50 years.

The structural survey finds “significant structural cracking”, “connection of timber roof purlins … found to be insufficient”, “issue with masonry wall ties between internal and external leafs… no ties were visible during survey”, and “connection between party walls and masonry external walls are insufficient”.

The Quigley survey focuses on the second and fourth blocks at Noonan’s Road, but a subsequent survey was carried out by Cork City Council of six flats in Noonan’s Road and St Finbarr’s Road and the council report concludes that the issues identified in the survey are not confined to the properties surveyed.

“Due to the proximity and variety of the inspected properties along with the fact that all properties were designed and built at the same time, we can assume with a high level of confidence that the issues found across the below properties, have been repeated across all of the Noonan Road and Saint Finbarr’s Road apartments,” the report finds.

The report estimates that repairs to the Noonan’s Road and St Finbarr’s Road properties would cost €103,558 per unit, or a total of €9,113,101, while a refurbishment of the council’s properties on Dean St and Fort St would cost €2,899,623.

In total, the cost estimate for repairs to the flats on Noonan’s Road and St Finbarr’s Road came to €12m, before the cost of rehousing tenants and storing their possessions is taken into account, but the council report stresses, in bold, block capitals: 

“It is NOT the recommendation of this report to carry out these repairs post construction due to the volume of ties required and size of elements involved. The recommendation of this report is to knock all external walls to ground level and re-build entire structure.”

The council’s report also contains an estimate of the cost of demolishing the existing structures to ground level and constructing new structures and properties in their place.

The report estimates that new three-bedroom apartments would cost €258,000 each, with two-bedroom apartments costing €193,500 each.

The report estimates that a full, new build of 30 three-bedroom apartments and 30 two-bedroom apartments at Noonan’s Road would cost an estimated €13,545,000.

It estimates that a similar rebuild on St Finbarr’s Road of 12 two-bed units and 12 three-beds would cost an estimated €5,418,000.

The report allows a demolition cost of €1m for the two developments, and gives a combined total for demolition and refurbishment of €19,963,000.

William O’Brien, a community activist who has highlighted the plight of Noonan’s Road residents over the past month, said he was “lost for words” to learn that the December 2022 report existed.

“Noonan’s Road and St Finbarr’s Road residents have been campaigning on their own for years, and the realities of life in dilapidated and dangerous buildings has been confronting them for years, and all these reports have been done in the background and the residents were never told,” he said.

Thomas Gould, Sinn Féin TD for Cork North Central, said the report was a shocking indictment of the city council’s failure to resolve issues for residents at Noonan’s Road.

“The report highlights the poor conditions of these units and the need for urgent long-term solutions. It found serious issues with the units and the long-term recommendation was to rebuild from the ground up,” he said.

“The serious structural issues found in this report, with roofs and walls, are deeply concerning. We would agree with the recommendation that the most credible and reasonable long-term alternative is to demolish these units and rebuild from the ground up.”

Mr Gould said his Sinn Féin colleague Councillor Fiona Kerins had raised the issue of the flats multiple times over the past years, but to no avail.

“That Cork City Council have sat on this report for over eight months now and failed to move forward with a plan or inform residents of the findings of the report is scandalous.”

Fine Gael Councillor, and current chair of the Cork South Central Ward, Shane O’Callaghan, said his understanding was that it was a preliminary report and he believed it would inform the report due in September.

“I would suspect that the recommendation in the September report will be to demolish and rebuild, which is something that, given the level of deterioration, in my opinion would be the correct course of action,” he said.

Asked specifically by The Echo whether Cork City Council had any other unpublished reports relating to the flats at Noonan’s Road, St Finbarr’s Road, Fort Street and Dean Street, a council spokesperson said: “No. The council has no further reports relating to the assessment of options for Noonan’s Road.”