About Mary Molloy Solicitors

The Other Side of the Site Fence

Irish construction law is dominated by large firms acting for developers, funders and main contractors on major projects. That is not our client. Ours is the family whose extension was abandoned at first fix; the couple whose new build leaks; the self-builder squeezed between a certifier and a contractor; the subcontractor owed three months of payments by a company twice their size. Those clients need the same law the big projects use — contract, defects, adjudication, limitation — explained in plain English and applied at a scale that makes economic sense.

The practice is led by Richard O’Shea, a solicitor whose litigation work runs through exactly these disputes — and who holds a Diploma in Mediation from the Law Society of Ireland. In construction that credential is not decorative: conciliation and mediation are how a large share of building disputes actually resolve, the Mediation Act 2017 obliges solicitors to advise clients about mediation before issuing proceedings, and a mediator’s training changes how the whole file is run — toward the resolution that keeps the house finished and the money recovered, not the fight that consumes both.

How We Run a Building Dispute

Evidence first: the contract, the money trail, the dated photographs — and the independent expert report from a chartered engineer or building surveyor, because we are lawyers, not engineers, and defects cases are won on expert opinion. Honest arithmetic second: what the claim is realistically worth, what it will cost to run, and whether a well-aimed letter, a mediation or an adjudication gets you there faster than a courtroom. And the clock always: limitation in building cases is genuinely treacherous, and the first consultation always establishes what time you actually have.

Our Offices

Dublin: The Ormond Building, 31-36 Ormond Quay Upper, Dublin 7 (D07 EE37). Kilkenny: 2 Rose Inn Street (R95 W58D). Building disputes run on documents, phone and email, so we act nationwide — from Donegal defective-block homes to Cork subcontractors. Call 01 5827148 or see the contact page.

Talk Through Your Build

One call: contract position, evidence needed, realistic routes, and the clock you are on.