Anti-Eviction Campaigners Address Dáil Meeting

Representatives of The Hub- Ireland, a community group working to prevent evictions, and Ken Smollen, the Convenor of a recent conference on the mortgage-arrears crisis, yesterday met with TDs in Leinster House to highlight issues of public interest on this issue which they feel have not yet been brought under proper scrutiny within the public sphere.

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They were there at the invitation of Seamus Healy, Independent TD.

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Byron Jenkins, Martina Doyle and Ken Smollen shared the knowledge, expertise, and insights garnered from their direct experience over the years of dealing with mortgage-holders in distress. They emphasised the acute urgency of the issue and brought to the attention of the politicians that 100,000 family homes, farms and small businesses are currently in arrears, and many of these are now the ‘potential homeless’ of the near-future, unless urgent action is taken to prevent financial institutions proceeding with further evictions.

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The campaigners highlighted the necessity for the immediate abolition of the Evictions Courts before the Dáil goes into Summer recess, and the repeal of legislation which enabled fast-and-easy repossessions of family homes by the banks. (The Land and Conveyancing Reform Act 2013.)

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The Hub-Ireland also submitted a position paper on the evictions crisis and surrounding issues, in which they presented a list of suggested solutions which they hope could be implemented without further procrastination in order to end, for once and for all, the widespread and deep despair that is being suffered across the nation by citizens under threat of eviction. They also highlighted the need for reforms to be introduced to bring probity and transparency to certain matters, where the nexus of banking, politics and law, has effectively enabled the mushrooming of a lucrative, international, Irish Evictions Industry, where many vested interests, both from here and abroad, are profiteering from the deep distress being suffered by ordinary people, whose homes, small farms and small businesses are being seized by the various legal entities who are now players in this new, murky area of economic activity.

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The Hub-Ireland is calling for further investigation of this matter of national importance. Following the meeting, the delegation expressed optimism that their message had been heard and understood by the TDs, and that political action would at last be taken, following the years of inaction by the last government. “We had a very good meeting,” said Byron Jenkins, from The Hub-Ireland. “We were warmly welcomed and each of us was given time to explain what is actually happening in the Circuit Courts throughout Ireland and what we see everyday—the pure heartache and misery of evictions. I was pleasantly surprised at the understanding the TDs had of the nature of this crisis and of their genuine intention to put a stop to the Evictions Courts and the havoc and distress that banks, financial institutions and other legal entities are causing. The politicians were all in agreement that the loss of life by suicide, the break-up of families, the homelessness and the horrendous human suffering being caused by the Evictions Courts must stop.”

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