Offaly councillor accused of promoting 'lawlessness' in sharp exchanges on eviction ban

AN Offaly councillor was accused of promoting lawlessness during sharp exchanges in a debate on the eviction ban on Monday.

Seconding a motion from Cllr Ken Smollen which proposed that the eviction ban be extended, Cllr Sean O'Brien called on tenants with notices to quit to stay in their homes and go to court if necessary.

Cllr O'Brien, an Independent councillor from Tullamore, said the eviction ban was “amazingly” going to be lifted on April 1, April Fool's Day, and his “big message” to anyone facing eviction would be: “Don't move, don't go anywhere, stay where you are.”

The councillor added: “In order to be evicted there has to be a legal process and go to the courts. The courts in this country would be so full of applications that the system would break down.”

He said all schemes attempted by the Government to address the housing crisis had failed, including those hastily assembled last week before the Dail vote.

“They won't work. They all just filling a gap.”

Cllr Smollen's motion called on the Government to extend the eviction ban for all ‘no fault’ tenants who face eviction “until meaningful action is taken”.

That meaningful action should include measures “that will ensure that thousands of children and their parents around the country aren’t added to the growing homeless list”, said the motion.

Cllr Smollen, an Independent representative for the Tullamore Municipal District, said all the Government's schemes and initiatives had failed miserably.

The councillor said the official homeless figures were at their “highest ever levels” and he claimed social housing lists were “static at best”.

Rents from private landlords and house prices were out of reach and he said the Government decision to lift the ban was not only wrong, but was “callous, it was cold, it was inhumane and it was cruel”.

“That decision will undoubtedly result in many families in Offaly and thousands of 'no fault' eviction families across the country being made homeless.”

Schoolchildren will lose contact with local supports and friends, mental health problems will increase, nurses and teachers are emigrating “in their droves” and his “former colleague” in the guards were leaving their jobs.

Cllr Smollen added: “None of this is the fault of the private landlords. The fault lies fully with the present and previous governments that decided to rely on the private sector to build houses and to rely on private landlords to provide housing for tenants who should all have access to social housing.”

Cllr John Leahy, Independent councillor from Kilcormac, said that while he would table a counter proposal because he did not want to “divide the chamber” he had to put on record that he “categorically couldn't support” the motion.

He said the keeping the ban in place would result in some landlords losing their properties.

Cllr Leahy said he would address the matter both as a public representative and an auctioneer. First, as a public representative, he said he predicted the “tsunami” when the eviction ban legislation was introduced because he knew landlords would take the view that they would “get out of the market” when the Government passed a law telling them what they could and couldn't do with their own property.

Some landlords with houses in rent pressure zones (where rent increases are capped) were no longer able to meet the mortgage repayments because of the increase in interest rates which in some cases was resulting in hikes of between €150 and €300 a month”.

The councillor said landlords in that position were getting into debt and bad credit ratings themselves.

He thought it was “absolutely disgraceful” for another councillor to advise people to stay in a house when they got a notice to quit and asked who would pay the legal fees for those tenants when the matter got to court.

Cllr Leahy added that wearing his “auctioneer's hat” he had people coming to him and saying they could not meet their mortgage repayments and feared that the banks were going to take their house over a period of time.

He went on to say that while Cllr Smollen had always held the line in fighting for people who were homeless, he was now “surprised” at him.

Cllr Smollen has been before the courts because of mortgage arrears himself and Cllr Leahy said: “This man built a platform, and rightly so, in helping people that went to the courts when the houses were being taken off them.

“Now, he's putting a motion together when the same thing is going to happen, that people are going to lose their property on the back of having people [renting from them] and they're not able to meet their repayments. That is very unfair.”

There was a time when “the English” were coming in and taking property from Irish people and blood had been shed because of it.

“We now have legislation that is doing the very same thing.”

Cllr Leahy said reducing the tax being paid by landlords, who in some cases were left with just €500 from €1,000 rental income because of the tax rate of up to 50%, would help.

Cllr Clare Claffey, Social Democrats, supported the motion and said she fully agreed with “everything” Cllrs Smollen and O'Brien had said.

In 2014 Fine Gael promised to tackle the housing crisis but their policies led to this “housing disaster” said Cllr Claffey, adding that a home is a “basic right” and shouldn't be something “that is for profit”.

Cllr Noel Cribbin, Fine Gael supported Cllr Leahy and told Cllrs Smollen and Leahy that the “ship sailed” a week earlier when the vote in the Dail was won by the Government.

The Edenderry councillor criticised Cllr O'Brien: “For a councillor to come in here and tell people to break the law, to stay in a place where they have to get out of, that's not good advice to be giving to people.”

The Independent from Birr, Cllr John Carroll, said the failure lay with Government policy for many years and the decision to take house building away from the council over many decades.

Cllr Carroll also said: “I would stand with any family before I'd see them put out on the street.”

Responding to a question from Cllr Declan Harvey, Fianna Fail, Sharon Kennedy, director of service, said the County Council had been given an allocation to purchase houses where people had been issued with notices to quit.

Ms Kennedy did not say how much the allocation was but stated: “We're engaging with the department.”

The director added that while she knew members were genuine in what they had said, and she was aware people were presenting to the council's housing counter with very, very difficult stories, progress had been made.

In October 2019 there were 646 on the Offaly social housing list. “That list is down to 469 today.”

On top of that, in the next six months there will be 118 new houses available to the council, including “quite a number” in the Tullamore area and the council will also be given allocations to buy houses.

Sophia Housing is also progressing with its emergency housing project in Clonamore, Tullamore.

“We are improving and have significantly improved even through the whole of Covid, cost inflation, supply pipeline challenges, we're still progressing.”

Ms Kennedy said the council was concerned about people getting notices to quit.

She stated: “We would suggest that people would comply with the law and that we would work with them to try and ensure we find some solution for those who are qualified applicants, or who are entitled to be qualified applicants for social housing.”

Cllr Harvey said a huge job had been done by the council in housing provision but there was more to do. He agreed with Cllr Carroll that the council should return to direct building of houses, a move which would also boost apprenticeships.

At this point in the debate Cllr Smollen received clarification from Cllr Tony McCormack, acting chair, that the motion had been passed and he asked that it be circulated to all other local authorities. Cllr Smollen also congratulated those Green Party councillors who had objected to the Government's decision.

Responding to Cllr Leahy's comments, Cllr Smollen said he had always tried to protect children and their parents from homelessness.

“I have always stood by them, whether they owned their own homes or were tenants and I have never, ever defended tenants that don't pay rent, I've never ever defended tenants that are involved in anti social behaviour. We're talking about innocent people here who are doing their best. Most are working and are trying to keep a roof over their heads.”

Cllr John Clendennen, Fine Gael, said the issue was one of a lack of supply and every effort had been made by the Government to keep a roof over people's heads.

Cllr Clendennen said Cllr O'Brien's comment was irresponsible and he had never heard any constructive proposals from people like him to increase supply.

“For any member of this chamber to come in and suggest lawlessness in our county, I would wholeheartedly and fully condemn.”

He said the councillors behind the motion would be back in the chamber in a month's time promoting efforts to bring life back into town and village centres through schemes where property owners were being given incentives to do up their properties.

Those same property owners could then become “accidental landlords” too, noted Cllr Clendennen, accusing the other councillors of “speaking out of both sides of their mouth”.

Cllr O'Brien then praised the comments of Cllr Carroll and said they were “in sheer contrast to the Cllr O'Brien, a former Labour Party member, added: “It didn't take Cllr Cribbin (a former Independent) long to get into the rhetoric of the right wing Fine Gael and to accuse me, and for himself and Cllr Clendennen, to accuse me of lawlessness.”

He asked Fine Gael if they were saying a tenant should “pack their bags and get out” the minute they received notice from a landlord.

“That's the option Fine Gael are offering to the hard pressed tenants of this country.”

He recalled in 2019 when he proposed a motion on housing that Fine Gael and Fianna Fail wanted him to take out the word “crisis”.

“I'm delighted this motion has passed here today and is now the policy of this council.”

Entering the debate, another Fine Gael member, Cllr Liam Quinn, rejected a claim from Cllr O'Brien that Fine Gael had indicated all was “rosy”.

Cllr Quinn said his party was just acknowledging the good work being done by the council.

He said there was a “tsunami” of different causes for the housing demand and said he knew from his work as a teacher that companies were seeking people to take up apprenticeships.

The Rhode man dismissed the “nonsense” coming from some of the other speakers and accused them of unfairly painting it as a “them and us” issue.

“It might get you a headline. That's fine, I'm not that interested in it, and I'm not on Facebook or anything like that. I've no intention of being on it.”

Cllr Neil Feighery, also Fine Gael, said he resented attempts by Cllr O'Brien “to categorise us as heartless”.

“I was brought up with a very strong social and moral compass and I put myself forward to represent people to try and support policies that progress our county and try and support the population,” said Cllr Feighery.

He said the Government was pumping billions into housing but the country did not have the capacity to build enough of them because of the skills shortage.

“It's easy for Cllr O'Brien to come in with simplistic solutions and throw mud across the chamber here which I absolutely resent.”

The Killoughey representative said there were three parties in the Government with different ideologies but they were trying to get to the same destination.

The final comment was from Cllr Smollen who said there are now 665 families receiving HAP support in Offaly.

“Not one of those families has security of tenure. Any one of those families or all of them could receive an eviction notice tomorrow. That's where the problem lies.”

Referring to statements by opponents of his motion that 30,000 houses were built last year, Cllr Smollen said 23,000 of them were occupied by people with mortgages who would not be left with much other money to spend.