A modern courthouse built only eight years ago has buckets on the stairs and “all over the place” to capture leaks, the Dáil has heard.
Fine Gael TD Paula Butterly has questioned “whether we are investing in and building these structures properly” as she highlighted problems with Drogheda courthouse, in Co Louth, which opened in 2017 as part of a €9 million investment.
She said, “In the space of 12 months, we have seen repeated problems, most recently with courtroom one, as a result of burst pipes in the roof ... How can we avoid having buckets lying around a modern facility?”
District Court sittings moved to neighbouring Dundalk courthouse following the burst pipes incident.
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Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan said he would ask his officials and the Courts Service about Drogheda courthouse.
“Any issues with it need to be resolved immediately,” he said, adding it was the responsibility of “the company that built it and from which the State is contracting it”.
O’Callaghan pointed out that the building is included in a seven-courthouse public-private partnership (PPP) bundle, delivered as part of a 25-year concession period.
“Drogheda courthouse was the first of the projects to be handed over in June 2017 on a landmark town centre site beside the river Boyne,” he said.
Answering questions in the Dáil, the Minister said flooding occurred in January 2025 as a result of burst pipes.
“Following the completion of initial repair works, a walk-through inspection of the facility was carried out” later that month which allowed the building to reopen – apart from courtroom one, which remained closed until repairs were completed in April that year.
The cost of the PPP contract covers the design, construction, financing “and importantly, maintenance and repair of the facility”, the Minister said.
There is a “single annual unitary charge, which represents a composite payment for all services provided under the contract”.
He said: “The risk and costs of the repairs fell under the ownership of the PPP company, not the Courts Service. The entity that paid for the repair works was not the State but the PPP company.”
Capital funding allocated for courthouse works last year amounted to €9.74 million. “The total cost of the PPP contract is quite significant but, as I said, the State did not have to pay for it,” O’Callaghan said.
Butterly asked for the cost of capital repairs, maintenance and flood prevention works last year.
O’Callaghan could not give “an exact detailed breakdown of the charge because it is commercially sensitive and is protected under the terms of the PPP contract”, he said.
The Louth TD described Dundalk courthouse as “an amazing facility that is potentially underused at times”. Butterly, who trained as a barrister, said former colleagues told her courthouses at regional level across the country “are in dire need of repair”.
The Minister told her he visited Armagh courthouse last week, which is “very similar to the other courthouses we inherited from the British around the country”.
“Some of them, because of their antiquity, are in need of significant work, but their antiquity means most are protected structures.”
The Minister said the construction of new courthouses “is an important part of my programme to ensure Courts Service facilities around the country are suitable”.
Many fine new courthouses had been built over the years and many “were designed very effectively”, he said. “There is money there to build more. However, when it comes to ancient buildings, there are issues in terms of what can arise.”
