Storm damage to garden fences is one of the most contested categories on Irish home insurance. Walls and gates usually settle. Fences usually do not. Here is why the line falls where it does and what your policy probably says.
How most policies treat fences
Most Irish home policies explicitly exclude storm damage to fences, gates, hedges, plants, or anything else considered “exposed garden boundary”. The wording is often something like: “We will not pay for storm damage to fences, hedges, gates or freestanding garden walls.”
The reasoning the industry gives is that fences are too exposed to wind to insure economically. The practical effect is that a fence flattened in a storm is the homeowner’s expense to replace.
Walls usually are covered
Solid masonry boundary walls (block, brick, stone) are normally treated as part of the buildings cover and are usually claimable when storm-damaged. The cover is sometimes capped, particularly for very long boundary walls. Read the schedule.
Gates, including the gate posts, sit somewhere in between and the answer varies by insurer. Iron gates on stone piers are usually covered. Timber gates on timber posts often are not.
What about your own garden shed
Garden sheds and outbuildings are typically covered under buildings, with their own sub-limit. Storm damage to a shed roof, side panels, or contents inside (within the contents sub-limit for items in outbuildings) is normally claimable.
For the broader storm-damage scenario, see storm damage claims.
If a neighbour’s tree fell on your property
Damage to your buildings (roof, walls, gates) from a falling tree on your land or a neighbour’s land is usually covered by your buildings policy regardless of whose tree it was. Damage to your fence specifically may still be excluded under the fence-specific exclusion above.
Recovering against the neighbour is a separate question outside of your insurance, and depends on whether the neighbour was negligent (a known dangerous tree they failed to maintain).
When to call a loss assessor
For wider storm damage that includes structural damage to walls, roofs, or main buildings alongside fence damage, it is worth having the claim reviewed before you accept the insurer’s first split. Sometimes elements the policyholder thought were excluded turn out to be claimable under a different section, and vice versa.
Read your schedule
The fence question is one where the policy schedule is genuinely the only authority. The exclusions vary between insurers and even between policy versions from the same insurer. Five minutes with the policy document tells you exactly what is covered, what is excluded, and what is sub-limited.
Written by the team at N.J. Carroll & Associates, insurance loss assessors and quantity surveyors, established 1988.
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