It follows a pattern. A decision is taken that some owners dislike. Questions are asked and answered badly, or late, or not at all. A faction forms, a WhatsApp group appears, the AGM becomes a hearing, and volunteer directors — unpaid, exposed and now accused — begin to resign. Within a year the building is being run by nobody, and everybody’s asset is worth less.
What the Fight Is Actually About
Rarely the thing named in the emails. Underneath the disputed levy or the agent’s contract sit three recurring grievances: information (owners who feel they cannot see how their money is spent), process (decisions taken without consultation people believed they were entitled to), and recognition (directors who have given years of unpaid weekends and are now treated as suspects). None of those is a legal claim, and none is fixable by a judgment — which is precisely why litigation makes OMC civil wars worse: it converts a governance problem into a public, expensive, adversarial one, funded from the service charge that everyone pays. Meanwhile the actual building keeps needing maintenance, and the fund keeps paying lawyers instead.
What a Mediated Route Can Deliver
Concrete things, agreed rather than imposed: an information regime both sides can live with (what gets published, how often, in what form — usually far less onerous than the board feared and far more than members currently get); a consultation protocol for decisions above a threshold; an agreed approach to the specific decision that triggered everything, sometimes revisited on better information; agent arrangements clarified, renegotiated or put to tender; a route back for members who want to serve rather than shout, including how the board is refreshed; and an agreed account of what happened, which sounds soft and is frequently the load-bearing term — people need the story settled before they can stop retelling it. Two design points matter. First, who is in the room: directors with authority, a mandated representative for the members’ group, the agent as party or information source — and anything requiring a members’ resolution identified in advance. Second, the machinery: the settlement is built to work with the constitution, house rules and budget cycle, and with the Multi-Unit Developments Act framework of consultation and annual meetings, rather than cutting across them.
The asset argument that ends most board debates: a scheme with a litigation history and no functioning board is a scheme where units sell slowly and for less. Every owner on both sides of the war owns that outcome equally — which is usually the sentence that gets people into a room.
A board and a membership at war? 01 5827148 — confidential, and the conflicts check runs first.
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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