Tag Archives: eviction

Last Tuesday.

Falsk, Strokestown, Co Roscommon

The forced evicton of two elderly brothers and sister and repossession of a farmhouse by security guards working on behalf of US vulture Cabot, which purchased the loan from KBC Bank. An unnamed retired Garda (above) assisting the siblings was among those injured.

On Wednesday, a day after the eviction.

During a debate concerning the Anti-Evictions Bill…

Independent TD for Roscommon-Galway Michael Fitzmaurice said:

“I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill, parts of which are a no-brainer. Many people in this country are receiving notice to quit letters from banks which are moving to sell buy-to-let properties. We need to introduce a law in this country so that this does not continue to happen.

“In my opinion, many of the banks involved are scum.

“Yesterday in County Roscommon a group of 20 or 30 men with dogs came from the North, aided and abetted by An Garda Síochána who blocked off two roads. The group of men pegged three people, two of whom were elderly, out of a house and left them on the side of the road. They were aided and abetted by An Garda Síochána, which is disgraceful.

“Irish people need to wake up, especially if people are coming from the North. We must take them on and stop what is happening.”

Sunday morning.

Falsk, Strokestown, Co Roscommon.

The attack took place at around 5.30am this morning at a recently repossessed house and farm in Falsk near Strokestown.

Security personnel were at the scene when a large number of men in high-viz jackets arrived and attacked them with baseball bats.

The eight people who were injured are all security personnel and the dog that was killed was a security dog.

The farm and house have been sealed off as a crime scene and gardaí have begun a criminal investigation.

Investigation into attack at repossessed farm in Roscommon (RTÉ)

Previously: Eviction Notice

” On the North Circular Road there is a building with 16 families living in apartments. Many young children are living there, looking forward to Santa coming, but before Christmas all those families have been issued with notices to quit.

The landlord is not a small accidental landlord but a businessman with multiple properties.

Yesterday, he told the tenants they were great tenants but said the market dictates the rent.

The ground for eviction is the supposed need for substantial refurbishment.

In reality, the tenants and the landlord know – I presume everyone here knows this and has seen it happen time and again – that this is yet another renoviction, something that deserves a word for itself now because it is so widespread, with the need for refurbishment used as a pretext to kick out tenants and hike up rents.

If these tenants are evicted, they will mostly be evicted into homelessness.”

Paul Murphy TD (top) in the Dáil this afternoon.

St Helen’s Court, Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin

Residents of 17 apartments in Dún Laoghaire in Dublin have been told by their landlords – two global investment funds – that they have to vacate the property within weeks.

The tenants of Saint Helen’s Court received letters from a receiver acting on the owners’ behalf, telling them to move out on various dates to allow for major refurbishments.

…It says residents will have the chance to re-rent the apartment once work is completed under certain conditions.

However, residents are sceptical. They say last year attempts were made to substantially increase the rent, just two days before the enactment of legislation only allowing rent rises of 4% a year in designated rent pressure zones.

Call for Govt to intervene as residents told to vacate 17 Dún Laoghaire apartments (RTÉ)

Pic; RTÉ

Further to the story of Direct Provision resident “Jane”, whose case was aired on RTÉ Radio One’s Liveline yesterday.

Jane who, after asking for more food while breastfeeding her three-month-old child,, was evicted from Mosney, given two days’ notice to move accommodation in a “bed management” letter (above)  that made no mention of her two children.

Mark Malone writes:

The Reception and Intergration Agency (RIA) does not outline any specific rationale, or detail any of the particulars why ‘accommodation arrangements’ needed to be reviewed in the first place. Nor does it outline what the process of review involved. Its a defacto decree with no means to official appeal.

It begs the question why was Jane was not given ANY information that might offer ANY grounds for understanding the basis of RIA intended eviction?

It might be dressed up in a sterile language less damaging to the sensitivities of Killian and other RIA bureaucrats. Who would lose sleep writing letters to evict people seeking refuge in Ireland were its just about “bed management”?

Yet it remains unmistakeable. What we are reading – and what this letter is – is the exercise of arbitrary power over a family without the slightest attempt of providing any meaningful justification. It is the text book definition of authoritarianism.

Meanwhile, this incident is merely the tip of the iceberg…

Former workers employed in direct provision centre spoke about persistent system degrading treatment on a daily basis. Of making people queue and beg for rationed toilet rolls. Of other employees refusing to give toiletries to individual adults, arguing one bottle of shower gel between three people in a room is sufficient.

Petty violence after petty violence, micro aggressions from management and employees as a tool of social control against people denied the basic anatomy to work for themselves and their families. Processes which cause genuine emotional tramas, depression and in some cases suicide.

RIA, Direct Provision and State Violence (Soundmigration)

heifers2image

From top: Shot heifer at John Hoey’s fam in Co Monaghan Chris Lehane, a court-appointed trustee who takes control of the assets of bankrupts; interview with Mr Hoey on Cork’s 96fm Opinion Line

Further to revelations yesterday that five heifers were shot by members of the armed forces on Tuesday as part of a debt recovery exercise.

Via Irish Farmers Journal

The owner of the stock – farmer John Hoey from south Monaghan – told the Irish Farmers Journal that the army was called to shoot the animals after the debt collection service had struggled to load the five animals on to a truck.

The owners also allege that all other machinery from the farm had been removed. It is understood that the local Department of Agriculture vet had been made aware of the military exercise.

The Irish Farmers Journal understands that a long-standing protocol between the Department, An Garda Síochána and the army allows for intervention when there is a threat to public safety.

A fallen animal service was called to collect the dead animals but subsequently got stuck in the field they were in.

The Official Assignee in Bankruptcy, Chris Lehane, said in a statement that he had made the decision to have the cattle killed after failing to remove all the “wild and dangerous” animals from the farm with “experienced cattle assistants”.

“As Official Assignee I have a duty to recover value from assets of bankruptcy estates and it is clearly not in my interests to kill cattle, nor would I do it, without firstly having exhausted every other possible avenue open to me to resolve the problem.”

The Official Assignee in Bankruptcy is part of the Insolvency Service of Ireland, the independent statutory body tasked with monitoring situations in which people are unable to pay their debts.

‘I ran behind the last one as they riddled her with bullets’ – Farmer heartbroken by cow shooting (Irish Independent)

Yesterday: Animals

Meanwhile, Seaán O’Rourke spoke to both John Hoey and his partner Aisling McCardle this morning.

From the discussion with Aisling…

Seán O’Rourke: “What would you say to the point made by Chris Lehane, the Official Assignee, that he has a duty to recover the value of assets in bankruptcy estates and it’s clearly not in his interest to kill the cattle, nor would he do it without firstly exhausted every possible other avenue open to him to resolve the problem?”

Aisling McCardle: “He is very incorrect in what he’s saying because he didn’t exhaust every avenue. He never, in all his time, that we spoke to the Official Assignee he never said, ‘we’re coming to shoot the cattle because we can’t capture them, will you go out and take the cattle in’. Like, as Johnny has explained, if he goes out with a bucket of meal, he’d have those animals in, in ten minutes. So he didn’t exhaust every avenue, he wasn’t taking health and safety affairs into consideration for us because we were out in the middle of this the other morning. I mean, some of us could have got shot very easily and where would the health and safety have been then? He did not exhaust every avenue.”

O’Rourke: “Well I suppose they would have been very careful about it, you’re talking about professional marksmen here now. Professional markspeople. They’re very careful where they shoot now, wouldn’t they?”

McCardle: “Yeah, but they still didn’t shoot the animals appropriately. Like some, as I was walking back up the road after that animal had been shot down there, there was the three animals that had shot up there in the corner, they were heading back… The armed men was coming back over, through the meadow, to get into a van, to be taken away. They actually stood over the three animals that were on the ground, lying there ready and shot them two or three times more.”

Listen back here

farmersjournal3farmersjournal

Yesterday.

Co Monaghan.

Patrick Donohoe, of The Irish farmers Journal, writes:

Five heifers were allegedly shot by members of the armed forces on Tuesday as part of an alleged debt recovery exercise.

The Irish Farmers Journal has been contacted by the owners of the animals who allege that five of their heifers were shot by members of the army on a farm in Co Monaghan.

Watch: Cattle allegedly shot by army in debt dispute (Patrick Donohoe, The Irish Farmers Journal)

Farmer claims cattle should have been tranquilised rather than shot (Northern Sound)

Meanwhile..

The Hub Ireland writes:

Yesterday, The Hub – Ireland started to receive phone calls about animals being shot. From what we can gleam from emotional phone calls: in South Monaghan the farmer/owner was made bankrupt and the receivers moved in.
100 animals (beef bullocks and cows), well fed and well looked after were loaded onto a truck, six heifers could not be fitted in: bad loading: receivers kind of do that.
The owner said he would load the remaining 6, the answer was no.
Unsure of what to do he returned to his home: the next thing just amazes us. The remaining six animals they shot them dead with riffles,
And it get so much worse: like a plan comes together: They had a Licensed abottoir there to collect the bodies and cart them off to the market.

Aisling Nic Ardaile adds:

I can verify that yesterday at 11am the army surrounded the farm, opposite the family home. They were lined out in the field along the fence firing shots at the animals who tried to flee them. The owner was outside the house adjacent to one of the animals who had the army on the other side….

He tried to chase the animals so they wouldn’t get shot. Nearly getting himself shot in the process, but no matter, what help he could have tried to give the animal would have been useless as he was defenceless and trying to save his animals that he reared himself.

The Hub Ireland (Facebook)

UPDATE: A ‘Military Exercise’

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This morning.

Dawson Street, Dublin 2

Tenants and supporters of residents of the Cruise Park housing estate in Tyrrelstown, north Dublin, who are facing eviction, gathered outside Davy stockbrokers before marching on the Dáil in protest at their treatment by property vulture funds.

The Tyrrelstown Tenants Action Group was set up after the Sunday Business Post reported that over 200 families renting in the estate could be evicted due to a deal between Goldman Sachs and indebted property developer Twinlite

Twinlite’s loans held on the estate were sold to the European Property Fund (EPF), owned by Goldman Sachs and administered in Ireland by Davey stockbrokers.

Sam Boal/Rollingnews

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54-55 Mountjoy Street, Dublin 7 last Friday

You may recall how 13 families were due to be evicted from their emergency accommodation on 54-55 Mountjoy Street, Dublin 7, last Friday, the day of the election.

Further to this…

Dublin Central Housing Action writes:

Dubin City Council (DCC) have failed to meet [the families’] demands and are refusing to enter into talks with them. In response to this they have, thus far, resisted the eviction and appear to be staying put. They have garnered a significant amount of support from the local community and further afield.

No suitable accommodation has been arranged by DCC. The families state that the temporary accommodation being offered is unsuitable as they offer no security, have no provisions for young children and disrupt their place on the housing list.

The stated reason for the eviction was an increase in the property’s rent, which DCC would be unable to supply. As the residents are in emergency accommodation, they do not receive protection under the tenants’ rights law. The residents became homeless for a variety of reasons, including landlords increasing the rents and rent allowances remaining stagnant.

Their demands are:

1) We are are allowed to stay in 54-55 Mountjoy or are properly and securely housed with full tenants rights in alternative accommodation, suitable for children.

2) That DCC and management go into talks with us collectively as a campaign.

3) All people are granted adequate and protected housing rights, tenancy protection and the safety of a home.

Dublin Central Housing Action

Previously: Squeezed Out Of The Market

Sam Boal/Rollingnews

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This morning/afternoon

Mountjoy Street, Dublin 7

Sam writes:

The building where it has been reported that there is a proposed eviction of 13 families who have been living in emergency accommodation…. The families were served with a notice stating that they were to be evicted on 26 February, election day, on 18 February. The stated reason for the eviction is an increase in the property’s rent which Dublin City Council (DCC) would not match.

Sam Boal/Rollingnews