Longford property owner reflects on fire that ripped through his Grafton Court property on Sunday morning

Property owner Caoimhín Smith is pragmatic about the fire that ripped through his Grafton
Court property on Sunday morning: “It's more of a shock to all the tenants, shop owners and their employees, because their day-to-day lives are all disrupted more than me. At the end of the day my building can be replaced, but their lives are put into a mess.”

The impact on the enterprises in the building is difficult to calculate at this early stage: “We have a lot of shops on the street level and upstairs we have between 15 and 20 small businesses.
We have Ukrainian business, dentists and accountants. Their lives are all inconvenienced. Some are probably not insured, they're going to be in a mess more than me.”

Caoimhíne describes the “like a family run” relationship with the tenants in situ “from the very beginning”, adding: “Business like Grafters, it was like we were working together rather than tenant and landlord.”
Fortunately no one was injured in the fire: “It's all commercial, the whole top of the building is The National Learning Network. We have offices in the middle sections, and ground floor shops, like Grafters and the Golden Health.
“We have the tattoo shop and the beauty parlour on top, then the new restaurant on the bottom. It's really heartbreaking for all of those people. They're waking up to a really difficult situation, whereas my building can be replaced.”

The search for the cause of the blaze started on Sunday: “The authorities are going in today to assess the building and to see if it's safe to reopen the road. After that, we will hear from them as to whether we can enter the building.
Some of the shops have access to their premises for a short period of time to get special belongings.
Then it's a case of getting an engineer in and sort of looking at what you can do. Over the next few days insurance assessors and forensics examiners will be on the scene.”