A board announces a special levy for major works. Within a week the emails have arrived: why now, why that much, what happened to the fund, who decided, and why was nobody asked. The board is bewildered — the works are necessary and the fund is short. Both sides are right, and that is exactly why it escalates.
Two Legitimate Positions Colliding
The board sees a building with a real problem: a roof, a lift, a facade, a fire-safety requirement — costed, urgent, and beyond what the reserve holds, in a scheme where contributions were probably set too low for years by people trying to keep charges attractive. Owners see a demand arriving without warning for a sum many of them must borrow, on top of a service charge that has been rising, from a board they did not elect to a fund they have never seen accounted for. Neither position is unreasonable, and neither is a legal claim — which is why this dispute so often ends up in the wrong forum. Litigation about a levy determines whether it was validly raised. It does not answer why nobody knew this was coming, and that question is what is actually driving the room.
What Gets Agreed in Practice
Sinking-fund mediations tend to produce a package with the same components: transparency about the fund — how it has been built, what it holds, what it has funded, presented in a form ordinary owners can read; an evidenced case for the works — the surveys and quotations shown rather than summarised, sometimes with an agreed second opinion on scope where trust has genuinely broken down; the levy restructured — phased, staged with the works programme, or paid over an agreed period, which frequently resolves the dispute entirely because for most owners the problem was never the amount but the timing; hardship arrangements for owners who genuinely cannot meet it, documented and enforceable rather than informal; and a forward-looking contribution plan so the next major item is funded rather than announced — the term that actually prevents the sequel. Add an information and consultation protocol and you have addressed the trust layer as well as the money layer. All of it is designed to sit inside the company’s own machinery — the constitution, the budget cycle, and the Multi-Unit Developments Act framework of reserve funds and annual meetings — with anything requiring a members’ resolution identified before the room, not after.
The board’s prevention checklist: most sinking-fund wars are avoidable by doing three unglamorous things early — commission the survey before the crisis, publish the fund position annually in plain language, and flag major works a year before the levy. Announcing works and levies simultaneously is what converts a maintenance issue into a governance dispute.
A levy that has split a scheme? 01 5827148 — conflicts check first, every party named.
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.
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