Dublin City Council not compliant with their own bin storage bye-laws
Dublin City Council is not compliant with their own bye-laws in the majority of their council complex bin storage areas.
In a presentation delivered to South Central Area representatives, Senior Executive Officer for Housing Maintenance Ursula Donnellan revealed a plan to upgrade bin chambers at complexes across the city. She explained that “in a lot of complexes we are not compliant with our own bye-laws” as set out for estate management.
Dublin City Council manages approximately 29,000 homes, 11,000 of which are located within 212 multi-unit flat complexes across the city. Ms Donnellan said that currently they are only compliant in “about 40 of our complexes”.
She explained the major issue relates to the segregation of waste, as there is a need to build chambers that can accommodate different sized bins within every complex. This will ensure everything does not go into residual waste, with the council currently preparing an education piece and building the requirements into the upcoming tender for their new domestic waste collection contract.
The rollout will be “quite slow” according to Ms Donnellan who said “it will take a number of years” to become fully compliant and they are now devising a programme “of how we are going to roll that out”. “We have quite a way to go on that, some will be easier than others,” she said, stating changes to how tenants present their waste is “ not always welcome among the residents ”.
This information comes as part of a broader presentation on reactive housing maintenance within DCC. Ms Donnellan also addressed concerns around the volume of repairs carried out by the council, elongated wait times, and consistent job vacancies within their maintenance division.
At a citywide level, Dublin City Council carried out 73,611 repairs in 2025. These relate to plumbing, carpentry, heating, and electricity, as well as external issues such as roofing and gutter works. Whether a repair is a tenant or the council’s responsibility is set out in the Housing and Community Services Tenant Handbook.
Repairs are classified under emergency (immediate works), urgent (wait of approx five working days), and routine (around eight weeks). While Ms Donnellan said they don’t have the statistical information for accurate stats, she believes the council “are pretty good at meeting the timelines”. However, she said the sheer volume of repairs needed backs “slippage from time to time is enviable”.
Social Democrats Councillor Lesley Byrne said the lack of clarity given to tenants around repairs can be frustrating as people are often left without any clear indication of when they can expect them to be completed. She cited tenants in Oliver Bond House in emergency situations with leaking roofs being collected with buckets of water who “haven’t heard from anyone in 10 days”.
She said emergency works often get initially addressed quickly, but tenants are then left waiting for follow-up visits. One family is reportedly now two weeks without flooring in a home that’s been invested with rats. Cllr Byrne said there is “confusion around how the system works” and updating tenants with a quick phone call “would be helpful”.
Expressing frustration around how information is communicated to tenants, such as being outright dismissed if they are in any sort of rent arrears, Cllr Byrne said “a lot of frustration could be avoided if things were handled sensitively from the beginning”. While the Tenant’s Handbook does say DCC will not carry out repairs for those in arrears, Ms Donnellan said this generally does extend to those in a repayment plan and arrangements can be made on a case-by-case basis.
Another issue that is contributing to a backlog in maintenance works is the deficit in the maintenance repair team. There are currently 10 job vacancies available, with Ms Donnellan saying this can often be as high as 20.
An aging workforce and consistent retirements mean it’s difficult for the council to keep their maintenance staff at sufficient levels and Ms Donnellan said the 10 vacancies is “as low as I've seen it since I've come into maintenance” and that they recently had an intake of staff transferred from water services, which has helped alleviate pressure.
She explained that 30% of their maintenance staff are over 60 and 50% are over 55. “The reality is that a lot of this work is very physically demanding,” Ms Donnellan said. “It’s not that we don’t get people into these posts, we do, but with the age profile there are as many retiring as coming in, so it’s a bit of a balancing act.”
“Everyone in a contract of employment can stay until 70. Caretaking work is more suitable for younger people, but we can’t get rid of people. We have to wait until they decide to go.”
Ms Donnellan also wished to state that a lot of their older staff are “very good workers” despite being near retirement age. Their work is also being supplemented by about 30 apprentices learning trades like plumbing, carpentry, and painting.
While residents are often frustrated by long wait times, DCC is in the process of digitising their system to offer people the option to log their repair requests online. Ultimately, the goal of this is to have a tracked system where residents can see for themselves where they are in queue and at what stage their repair request is at.
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