A landlord with a defaulting tenant has an obvious remedy and a less obvious calculation. Enforcing may deliver an empty unit — and a void period, incentives, fit-out contributions and agency fees to fund — while the arrears prove uncollectable from a company with nothing behind it. The room usually tests that arithmetic better than the writ.
Arrears: Recoverability First
The same sorting question governs here as everywhere: is the tenant unable to pay, unwilling, or disputing that it is owed? A tenant in genuine difficulty but with a viable business is worth an arrangement — a schedule for arrears, a temporary concession with a documented step back up, additional security or a guarantee, a lease variation — because a paying tenant on adjusted terms outperforms a vacant unit in most markets. A tenant disputing the sum (service charge apportionment, a repair the landlord did not do, a set-off) has a grievance that survives any judgment and returns at the next quarter. And a tenant simply refusing with means is a straightforward enforcement case, which is what you will be told. What makes the arrangement worth having rather than a soft option: it is enforceable as a contract, with consequences for default built in.
Dilapidations, Breaks and Renewals
Dilapidations are near-perfect mediation material: two surveyors, two schedules, a wide gap, and work that in many cases will never be done in the form claimed. A room narrows it to what is genuinely disputed, tests whether the landlord’s actual plans for the building affect the claim at all, and produces an agreed sum or an agreed scope with timing — in a day rather than through duelling expert reports. Break options are the unforgiving ones: conditions must be met strictly, and an imperfectly exercised break creates a high-stakes dispute about whether a lease continues for years. Mediation cannot rewrite the strict law, but it resolves the commercial reality far faster: the break stands on terms, or a surrender is agreed instead, or the tenant remains on revised terms. Renewals reward a room because the parties usually want the same thing — continuity on workable terms — and are arguing about price and documentation. One discipline overrides everything: notice requirements and time limits get diarised before any mediation is scheduled, because no negotiation is worth a missed deadline. And in multi-let buildings, resolving one tenant’s service-charge dispute in isolation simply reproduces it next quarter with another — so the mediation is built around the building, which is the commercial cousin of OMC work.
For tenants reading this: the same logic runs in reverse. A landlord facing a void has more to lose than the correspondence suggests, and a tenant who arrives with a credible proposal — accounts, a schedule, security — is negotiating from a stronger position than one who simply stops paying and waits. The full page is here.
A lease with years to run and a dispute in the way? 01 5827148.
Richard O’Shea — Solicitor & Mediator
Solicitor at Mary Molloy Solicitors (established 1981), holder of the Law Society of Ireland Diploma in Mediation and a TEP of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. Mediations are conducted at The Ormond Building on Ormond Quay, at the firm’s Kilkenny office, at neutral venues, at the parties’ own premises — or fully online. Fees are agreed in writing with all parties before any mediation begins. 01 5827148 · richardoshea@marymolloysolicitors.com · LinkedIn
General information, not legal advice. The content of this website is general information about mediation and Irish law. It is not legal advice and does not create a solicitor—client relationship. Every dispute turns on its own facts, and advice on yours requires a consultation.
The mediator is not your legal adviser. Where Mary Molloy Solicitors is appointed as mediator, the mediator is neutral: the mediator acts for no party, advises no party, and does not decide the dispute. All parties are encouraged to take independent legal advice, and in particular to take advice before signing any mediation settlement. The firm does not act as mediator in any dispute in which it acts, or has acted, for a party — conflicts are checked before any appointment is accepted. Where the firm is instructed as solicitor for one party in a mediation, it acts for that party alone and does not act as mediator in that dispute.
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