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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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51551 as well, the number for your texts. And Brian O'Shea is on the line. Brian, what happened in your local playground?
Hi Ciarán, thanks for having me on. So just to give your listeners some context. So we live in a newly developed estate here in Nation County, Kildare. And one of the conditions, probably like a lot of your listeners that live in here, is we have a management fee of about €1,000 imposed on us per year. And as part of that, the management company delivers a service.
Now, the service for some time has been quite poor.
Chapter 2: What incident occurred in the children's playground?
We often see requests going unanswered, services not delivered, procedures around the things like ONCs will generally have, like the election of directors, not being followed. AGM cancelled, like a list of things, right? But the main reason I guess I'm talking to you today is to an incident that happened in the playground within the development itself. So I have four young kids.
So we went to the playground there on Monday morning. And upon entering the playground, I seen a couple of kind of grey stone shaped plastic boxes. And they kind of had broken open. And there was about six of them. And they didn't immediately jump out at me as anything. So I just kind of let the kids play for a while.
So I took the phone out and took a picture just to kind of search to see what these boxes were. But as it transpired, they were rodent bait boxes. So essentially traps for the likes of rats and mice, etc. And when I kind of looked around, I kind of started to search the area. And I kind of seen there was like...
They're like blue sticks that look like rat poison in different places in the playground. So there was some kind of remnants of it in the sand table. There was some on the ground. There was some over in the sand pit where the kids would play. So I immediately took the kids out and I kind of explained to the other people in the playground what it was.
Now, there was nothing on the boxes themselves to kind of indicate that these were being used as rodent boxes or being used to trap rodents. So I went home and I got some gloves and a bag and kind of removed as much as I could find and then tried to reach out to the management company who there was no way of getting in contact with them.
Subsequently reached out to Kildare County Council and they took note of it and said they'd send someone out. They returned this morning to find it nearly exactly as it was yesterday with still remnants of what I believe to be the bait or the poison in the sandpit etc. And yet nobody taking responsibility or accountability to remove that.
I think later in today, they have since removed the boxes, but no explanation from the management company as to how these came to be in the development or why they're not labelled or who was responsible for placing them there.
Yeah, so we got on to Aramark as well and they say they confirmed this happened and they said all the traps have been removed today. So as you say, they're gone as we speak, but no explanation to us either as to why they were scattered around the playground. I mean, maybe to defend them, maybe there was a problem with rodents in the playground that they had to deal with?
Well, this is the other issue, Ciarán. There's been no communication with the residents on any potential issue of rodents winning. It's never been brought up as an issue.
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Chapter 3: What were the unusual items found in the playground?
Yeah. Look, even if there was an issue in the playground, as far as I know, rats are not literate. So as you say, have a sticker on the rocks and an email out to everybody in the estate. Somebody saw a rat near the playground. We don't like doing this, but there's rat poison down. Don't touch the rocks with a massive yellow sticker on them that say rat poison. And problem solved.
Yeah. And look, I think it's part of a wider issue with managing companies, I think. is the level of communication, the level of service being delivered. Like, I mean, we, as part of buying the house, and like anyone who's bought a house in Ireland, we're quite privileged to be able to do that, and we appreciate that.
But having a management fee imposed on us as part of that, it's not something we can really object to when you're in the process of buying a house. And, you know, this is just negating the duties of the council for that estate. and bringing someone in to privately deliver those services.
And for the money we're paying, you would expect a certain standard of service to be delivered and obviously that's not being delivered.
Yeah, well, listen, we put all of that as well to the management company and what we've got back is just that it did happen and they've gotten rid of the traps. If they provide any more answers to those questions, we'll bring them to you. Brian, thanks a million for joining us. Back in a moment.
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