The service charge is where apartment ownership meets its company: the annual bill that funds everything shared, set by a process most owners have never seen and many OMCs have never properly run. The MUD Act gives owners real rights over that money — approval, transparency, accountability — and a machinery for enforcing them that works far better than the two favourite improvisations: the angry email and the withheld payment.
Mary Molloy Solicitors are solicitors, not accountants or tax advisers. Nothing on this page is tax, accounting or financial advice — engage your accountant on those questions, and both advisers together where matters straddle the line. Company law procedures, CRO practice and filing deadlines change frequently, and reform of the law governing owners’ management companies and charities is ongoing; confirm the current position before acting on anything here.
Your Three Rights Over the Charge
- Approval: s.18 requires the annual charge to pass a members’ meeting — you are the electorate, not the customer;
- Transparency: a disclosed calculation basis, and s.17’s annual report telling the money’s full story — budget, spend, insurance, fund;
- Scope and spend: the lease, constitution and Act define what is chargeable and what the money is for — and mismatches are determinable, not just arguable.
The Escalation Ladder
One: the written demand — minutes, budget, calculation basis, the specific answers sought, framed by the statutory rights (boards discover obligations attach to silence). Two: the AGM used properly — questions on the record, votes on the charge, and if the meeting never happens, that failure is itself actionable: what members can demand. Three: section 24 — the Circuit Court machinery with mediation built in, for the residue correspondence cannot fix. Throughout: pay under protest. Withholding converts your grievance into their debt claim; paying-and-fighting keeps the grievance yours and the pressure theirs.
The Honest Other Side
Some charge increases are simply real: insurance in this sector has risen brutally, wage costs flow through contracts, and the sinking fund your development probably neglected (s.19 makes it obligatory) has to be funded eventually — the cheap charge of the last decade is often the crisis levy of the next. The owner’s rights above are rights to process and truth, not to the 2015 price. Boards reading this page from the other chair — arrears to collect, budgets to defend — have their own: the full service charge practice, both sides honestly served.
A Charge You Can't Get Answers On?
Bring the demand, the lease and whatever the OMC has sent. One call maps your rights, the letter and the ladder.
Call 01 5827148Related Reading
Service Charges - FAQs
About the Author
Richard O’Shea, Solicitor practises with Mary Molloy Solicitors (established 1981), advising company directors, shareholders, family businesses, owners’ management companies, clubs and charities across Ireland. Richard holds a Diploma in Mediation from the Law Society of Ireland — central to this work, where shareholder, family-company and apartment-block disputes are relationship disputes first, and where the MUD Act itself empowers the Circuit Court to direct parties to mediation. Contact Richard on 01 5827148 or richardoshea@marymolloysolicitors.com.
This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Every farm and family situation is different, and you should obtain advice on your own circumstances before acting. In contentious business, a solicitor may not calculate fees or other charges as a percentage or proportion of any award or settlement.