Is 'no satellite dish clause' unfair/illegal?

Moondance,

of course they are. This management company stuff is a lot of bull****, where they basically say it's their as if they represent 'people of Mars'. All this ownership stuff is just to impose rules and to have something over you.

Management companies are in for a big shock in this country.

What about people that are renting who certainly sign nothing of the sort that they are not allowed satellite dishes, or that they do not own the balcony, since they do not own anything anyway.
 
Mick - in answer to your question - I would think it highly unlikely that any development would install communal dishes after the apartments have been occupied. The wiring inside the apartments etc would be difficult to arrange, even to get access to them.

You also confuse management agents (ie the people who maintain the development and enforce the rules) and management company (the registered company that you became a member of at purchase).

Finally on the rented thing, the leases generally state that if you rent out your property then you are required to ensure your tenants are advised of and obey any development rules.
 
Is there a law that says that they are not permitted?
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The various Acts of the Oireachtas concerning the spending of public monies as well as various local government legislation.

Its not a case that if there is no law preventing the spending on a particular thing then the council is allowed to spend money on it. It works the other way around. Money CANNOT be spent on something unless provided for in law. Public money can only be spent of things if a law has been passed to allow its expenditure.

Somehow I do not see the Oireachtas passing a law forcing councils to maintain the fabric of buildings owned by private developers or householders. No doubt if they did, it would shortly be followed by court cases forcing councils to maintain all private dwellings. Could you imagine what the tax rate would need to be to fund this? Could you imagine the public outcry of having to pay other peoples maintenance bills?
 
Shesells,

I am not mixing up things at all. Management company Ltd like any other company could be abolished. The agent does not come into this at all.

Have you never heard of Limited companies ceasing their existence? Who owns the walls then once there is no management company? Leave agents out since they do not own anything and are just there to maintain premises.

In regards to communal dishes I would not agree with you. Existing wiring could be used as well, and many buildings today do come with extensive wiring.

In regards to public monies, people in apartments do not pay any less tax than others, so i don't see why public monies would not apply here
 
The management company ceasing to exist is not something that could just happen overnight with the freehold of the building floating off into the air as if it no longer existed. The company which has shareholders and the freehold is an asset of the company. If the company was to be sold off or go into liquidation then the asset would be sold to someone else.

As far as your analogy goes of an employer forcing someone to agree to only five days of holidays a year in a time of high unemployment it is completely nonsensical and not applicable to this situation at all. There is a difference between a term being included in a contract which is illegal, namely no holidays, and a term being included which you may not like. The last time I checked there was no mention of a right to a satellite dish anywhere in the Constitution (can't imagine how Dev missed out on that one), nor for that matter am I aware of any ECtHR decision with regard to a satellite dish being a human right. The fact of the situation seems to me to be that you signed up to a contract that contained a clause that you don't like but which you were aware of and agreed to anyway. The ability to watch as many tv channels as you like, while probably part of the couch potato's charter, is not one fundamental to the successful operation of society as we know it. What is fundamental is choice.

The developer chose to stop people from erecting satellite dishes.
You chose to agree to this term.
All of the other people in your apartment building did so as well.
You subsequently seem to have selfishly chosen to ignore this and attempted to justify this decision to yourself and others by cloaking your pigheadness in some nonsensical babble about human rights.
I hope the other people in your building choose to challenge you on this.
And finally I choose to think that you are a nob and that I'm glad I don't live in your building.

Choosing things is just the best:)
 
Pulped said:
You subsequently seem to have selfishly chosen to ignore this and attempted to justify this decision to yourself and others by cloaking your pigheadness in some nonsensical babble about human rights.....I choose to think that you are a nob and that I'm glad I don't live in your building.
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You've had a bad day, haven't you? Or are you just allergic to dishes?
 
I really don't understand how someone who objects to something is a nob & should be insulted. Very poor debating skills pulped & I for one am very happy I don't live in YOUR building.
 
To be very fair to pulped, before he snapped he was at least arguing with reasonable logic. Comments such as:

"All this ownership stuff is just to impose rules and to have something over you."

are rather irritating, and certainly do not add to the debate.

To be frank, this debate is going nowhere. A number of people who want satellite dishes are not prepared to countenance the possibility that they might in breach of an enforceable rule. Nothing will change their view.
 
In regards to public monies, people in apartments do not pay any less tax than others, so i don't see why public monies would not apply here
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Yes people in apartments are on the same tax rates as others. But people who dont live in apartments dont get their private houses maintained by the council free of charge, so why should apartment owners?

I think you fail to see the difference between public and private ownership. These apartment blocks are private property owned by someone, some company or the residents. They are not public property and so public money cannot and should not be used to maintain them.
 
MOB said:
To be very fair to pulped, before he snapped he was at least arguing with reasonable logic. Comments such as:

"All this ownership stuff is just to impose rules and to have something over you."

are rather irritating, and certainly do not add to the debate.

To be frank, this debate is going nowhere. A number of people who want satellite dishes are not prepared to countenance the possibility that they might in breach of an enforceable rule. Nothing will change their view.
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Fully agree. Some of the arguments go beyond the realms of stupidity. As someone who is on a residents committee in an aprtment complex, it astounds me the amount of people who didn't read the lease or house rules when spending a few hundred grand.
 
Sunny said:
Fully agree. Some of the arguments go beyond the realms of stupidity. As someone who is on a residents committee in an aprtment complex, it astounds me the amount of people who didn't read the lease or house rules when spending a few hundred grand.
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Ah you see, You might be in the right legally, and you might be in the right morally..... and of course you might be in the right contractually and err.... the right logically. But you see.... ummmmmm I want to have a dish. And its my house. So there! <runs away>
 
Sometime, somewhere , somehow this needs to be challanged in court.
When that happens is will simply be down to whether the contract is legal or whether it is breaching anyone rights. Untill then we are just going to keep going around in circles.
 
There seems to be 2 clear groups of people on here.

1 group, myself included who maintain that you knew what you were getting yourself into when you bought the property and if you wanted to have a dish you should have bought elsewhere.

The other group who bought/would buy anyway and either blatantly ignore the rules or moan about and try to challenge the rules.

We'll never agree and as Colm said, until there is a challenge we will keep going around in circles. So either take that legal challenge if you believe you are right or else abide by the rules as they stand!
 
Mick31 said:
I am not mixing up things at all. Management company Ltd like any other company could be abolished. The agent does not come into this at all.

Have you never heard of Limited companies ceasing their existence? Who owns the walls then once there is no management company?
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Abolishing the management company is a recipe for disaster, and it is extremely unlikely that a majority of owners would agree to this approach. This would leave existing owners unable to sell, as no-one is going to buy a property where this is no certainty about the common areas and the block insurance in particular. No bank will lend money for a purchase unless there is certainty about the the management company.

If you really disagree with what the management company is doing, you're gonna have to persuade a majority of the other owners to change the rules. There is no need to abolish the management company.
 
Thanks Pulped,

I hope you had great time telling me who or what I am, but I choose not to go down that road. You have demonstrated all prejudice you have towards people who think different from you. You should read a little bit before you make such statements, and not just press CTRL+F and look for 'satellite dish' under Human rights convention or EU internal market of free goods and services.

I have already stated I don't have nothing against this rule, but I believe it does violate a right to service reception. The contract you sign is meant to be a fair contract, not a denial of rights. Of course people need rules, some more than others and they are for the common good of all living in the confines of apartment blocks. You dont have a right to litter or play loud music or graffiti your walls but you do have a right to satellite services.
It is absolute nonsense to try illustrating your argument with some farcical situation of putting your dish on another persons wall; that is their home, it is not for your use. A balcony on your apartment is for your use, whether you own it or not. This regularly cited nonsense argument serves purely to misdirect and has no merit. For a start, you would likely have to commit tresspass to install your dish in somebody else's garden. If management companies want to prohibit dish; fine, but provide an alternative.

Different jurisdiction but they had pretty much the same rights and policies in the US though the same problems with management companies, in 1996 and again after appeal (moan whine Fifth Ammendment, constitution etc ) against it by IREM (Institute of Real Estate Management) in July 2001, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that Order 98-273, issued by the FCC, would remain in effect, ie confirmed that "In general, a satellite dish that is 1 meter (39.37 inches) or less may be installed on an area that you own or where you have exclusive use" Stems from the same basic rights as we have in the EU.
"The FCC confirmed that a unit owner has the right to install a dish in areas such as balcony that has been designed to be used only by that unit owner/tenant even if association management or maintenance personnel has access to that areas.
"Tenants on rental properties may install satellite dishes on balconies, porches and other properties with leaseholds."



[broken link removed] (this is IREM's own publication)


In regards to the EU: The Commission specifically set out the idea of individuals’ "right to use a satellite dish" in its communication of 27 June 2001 on satellite dishes.

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressRelease...format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en


Here is the EU Directive (2002/22/EC) on universal service and users rights relating to electronic communications networks and services:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32002L0022:EN:NOT
 
And here, word for word, is an extract from one of those links:

"Concerns of an architectural and town-planning nature, which are often cited in this context, can be met by solutions which make it possible, where necessary and technically feasible, to minimise the visual and aesthetic impact of satellite dishes without impairing quality of reception, under reasonable conditions and at reasonable cost; such solutions can, for example, involve the location of the dish (indoors rather than outdoors) or the type of dish (e.g. a collective dish rather than numerous individual dishes). "
 
Correct Mob.

Management companies reject everything straighaway without even considering any of these. I have sent numerous letters to my management company (still in developers hands) in regards to dish erection, and they never replied to any of these.

I still have receipts from the AnPost since I used registered mail. Some months later they sent me a letter without any reference to the letters I had sent them, simply asking me to remove the satellite dish. And that's why I rang them and told them that they have been ingoring me for a long period, and that I will physically prevent them for taking down my dish, and invited them to take me to court.

I have many documents at home in relation to this, some of them are from different jurisdictions though, but if these are unacceptable I have sufficient amount of an Irish ones too.
The logic of aesthetic is just wrong. 30 meters from my balcony is a set of houses in the same development under the same management company and most of them have clearly visible dishes, I can't see why my dish is less aesthetic or 'uglier' than theirs.

As you could see from those documents, there are some conditions that cane be met under reasonable conditions and at reasonable cost, without impairing quality of reception. Management company never specified any of these conditions, never even entered any talks about these
 
If the management company own the outer walls, and the tenants are, in effect, the management company (all equal shareholders), then isn't it the same thing that everyone owns their share of the outer walls ?

Still, all the 'I want...I don't want' arguments above illustrate why I would never live in an apartment.
 
Nope - as members of the management company the houseowners own some of my walls too! But get this, they also own their own!! They get deeds of sale, we get 1000 year leases. Not very fair but that's how it is!
 
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