May
16
Seven Gardai V One 50 year old woman on a ladder. Ireland 2010.
By
From yesterday’s Irish Daily Star. A couple with 3 children are €13k in arrears with Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council due to husband losing job. Bailiffs arrive with Gardai at seven in the morning to evict them without notice (according to the husband speaking to the Star reporter). Husband says they were making repayments as well.
Count the Gardai. Seven of them in the picture on the bottom right of the report. SEVEN well paid employees of the state to strong arm a 50 year old woman out of her home. Presumably a couple bailiffs were there too.
Sunday and all as it is – What an absolute fucking disgrace.
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7 Comments
May 16th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
They did not fall behind in their rent simply because the husband lost his job. The rent for the entire house was €100 per week and it appears there were 4 adults in the house either earning or drawing unemployment. And they couldn’t find €100 per week for the rent? For nearly 2 and a half years? There may be some other reasons behind this but it was not due to the husbands being unemployed. There are 1,000s of families up and down the country who have fallen on difficult times but they are making their payments.
This notion that they were making repayments and so shouldn’t be evicted masks the fact that they only started to make some repayments last September. And it is not clear exactly how much of the nearly 13K they had cleared to date or if they were consistently making those payments or were erratic in doing so. The idea that they’ve had no notice at any point that eviction was coming down the line is highly unlikely, they might not have been given notice of the time and date but they must have known it was coming. There are other families in need who would prioritise paying their rent and one of them should get the house instead.
May 16th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
I figured there would be more to the story than what was reported in the paper – understand and agree with what you’ve said – it was more the seven gardai that got me.
May 16th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
I think the number of Gardai present at the end had more to do with the crowd that had gathered than it did the woman herself. According to some of the papers it was about 50/60 storm and I’d not especially want to be a bailiff trying to move someone out from their home with 50/60 of their neighbours surrounding me.
May 16th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
And there was me thinking bailiffs were real hardened men able to handle themselves. 7 Gardai still seems over the top for inquisitive neighbours only there to view the ladder standoff.
May 19th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
well that’s Ireland for ya! the Gardai only turn up on droves when it’s a minor matter.
June 3rd, 2010 at 7:55 pm
Clicked on this to comment but Daniel has pretty much said it. Local Authorities only turf people out as a COMPLETE last resort … AND THEN SOME.
I would bet my house on the fact that there is MUCH more to the story than the non quality paper would let on. If there were that many gardai there i would hazard a guess that there was reason to have them there. They are there to protect the bailif’s or the county sherrif who have no powers of arrest etc.
You’ll prob find that this particular ‘family’ don’t have a sterling reputation with the gardai or the courts.
August 5th, 2010 at 9:43 am
The local council probably felt compelled to act lest the rot spread?