OPINION:Putting a family on the street on Famine memorial weekend had an air of 1846 about it, writes PATSY McGARRY
THERE WAS outrageous irony in the timing of that eviction of a family in Loughlinstown by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council last Friday. It should hardly surprise. An agency capable of such crass action would hardly be moved by recognition that its plan to evict a family coincided with the weekend of our second National Famine Commemoration Day.
If it were done by a bank there would be blue murder, and properly so. But that a statutory authority should do such a thing is beyond tolerance.
Shelter is a basic human right. Being deprived of it during the Famine and after gave such moral impetus to the independence movement on this island that we still feel its resonance. It might be said that the psychic scar left on our consciousness as a people by that history fuelled, in part at least, the recent property bubble.
You would imagine then that a statutory authority would never resort to eviction. But that one should took place in a State where there are 345,000 empty dwellings (17 per cent of housing) suggests imperious indifference.
According to newspaper reports, the family included a father and son who had lost their jobs in the construction industry. The mother returned from her part-time night job in a nursing home to find the rest of the family already on the street.
Many must have been enraged to see photographs of our gardaí officiating at the eviction. It was a reminder of so many sketches from 19th-century English newspapers of eviction scenes from Ireland where the police attended on the side of the landlord. Gardaí should never be placed in such a position.
The family had been living at their home for 16 years. Their rent was €100 a week. They had run up arrears of €12,500 up to last September. Since then they had been paying €150 a week rent with plans to pay a lump sum of €500 twice a year.
There may be more to the case than has been disclosed. It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t happen. Surely it is not beyond human ingenuity that those of them on social welfare could have benefits reduced by an agreed amount each week, which could then be forwarded to the council.
Henry Brougham told the House of Lords on March 23rd, 1846, that “It is the landlord’s right to do as he pleases . . . tenants must be taught by the strong arm of the law that they had no power to oppose or resist . . . Property would be valueless . . . if it were not acknowledged that it was the landlord’s undoubted and most sacred right to deal with his property as he wished.”
Substitute the words “Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council” for “landlord” and you will see that while there are those in Ireland who have forgotten nothing, there are also those who have learned nothing either.
Patsy McGarry is Religious Affairs Correspondent