Dundalk IT Students’ Union are appealing for landlords who wish to rent their properties out to students to contact them.
The Students’ Union puts a list together each summer of properties available close to the college.
To get on this please contact Students’ Union president Aaron Lawless on 042 9370390 or 085 2781462 or email president@dkitsu.ie
The accommodation list is due to go live next week.
All of the 17 private rental dwellings that were inspected by Louth County Council last year failed to meet the basic minumum requirements.
According to the Irish Independent, Louth was one of four counties – along with Donegal, Offaly and Limerick City Council – which saw a 100% failure rate.
Nearly 60% of rented homes around the country failed the inspections, prompting calls for landlords to be compelled to undergo ‘NCT-style’ inspections on their properties.
Each local authority has responsibility for checking properties in their area. The inspections are carried out following complaints from the public, as well as random inspection of the properties on the local authority database.
The future of Lifestyle Sports in the Marshes Shopping Centre in Dundalk is believed to be under threat after the sports retailer threatened to close the store in a dispute over rent.
The company’s owners have threatened to close up to 10 of its 67 retail outlets over a dispute with a group of landlords who will not give it a reduction on upward-only rents.
The company is owned by the Stafford group, which also owns Campus Oil. The Irish Times reports today that it has called a creditors meeting to appoint a liquidator to Pombury, an insolvent subsidiary of the Stafford Group that owns the leases on the 10 Lifestyle stores where landlords are holding out on any rent reduction.
Lifestyle has already negotiated rent reductions at 57 of its stores, and those leases have been transferred over to an entity called Lifestyle Sports (Ireland).
The move to wind up Pombury is being viewed as a tough negotiating tactic designed to bring its landlords to heel, or face receiving nothing in a liquidation. The company will now seek to enter negotiations with the landlords on the 10 properties, with a view to reaching agreement before the creditors meeting on February 19th.
It is prepared to shut stores where agreement cannot be reached, however.
While the exact location of the 10 stores has not been revealed, Pombury remains a defendant in a number of outstanding High Court cases taken against it by some of its landlords over rent disputes.
These include the owners of the Marshes shopping centre in Dundalk; the Wilton shopping centre in Cork; the Quayside shopping centre in Sligo; Liffey Valley in Dublin; and by the owner of a shopping centre in Ashbourne. It has settled other cases against landlords including Tesco.
It said that if any stores do close as a result of Pombury going into liquidation, the staff in those stores would be reassigned to some of its other outlets.
“Lifestyle Sports has, over the past four years, been fundamentally re-structured putting the business on a solid, sustainable and profitable footing,” said Mark Stafford, the chief executive of Stafford Holdings.
“The voluntary liquidation of Pombury, which is insolvent, is the final step in this restructuring process.
“There will be no implications for Lifestyle employees who will retain their jobs on existing pays and conditions.”
He said suppliers would continue to be paid “as normal”.
“Management in Lifestyle Sports (Ireland) will engage with landlords over the coming days to seek to reach agreement on the re-assignment of the remaining 10 leases,” said Mr Stafford.
Talk of the Town 