Residents of the Ryevale Lawns estate in Leixlip have been informed that the contract with Me Liberer to provide asylum accommodation at Ryevale House which sits in the middle of the residential estate will not be renewed.
In a message to the residents group yesterday afternoon, Kildare North Fine Gael TD, Joe Neville, stated that he had “just received notice from the Minister that the contract with Ryevale House is set to end on April the 30th and will not be renewed.”
This follows a long battle on the part of the Ryevale residents since Ryevale House began to be used as an accommodation centre in 2023. That was despite the ruling by Kildare County Council before it opened that it was not exempted development – and despite the subsequent issuing of enforcement proceedings by KCC.
All of these facts and the blunt truth that Ryevale House ought to have been closed not long after it opened was stressed by Ryevale Lawns Residents Association for the past three years and mostly to deaf ears among anyone with the power to ensure that the decision of the Council was put into effect.
This continued right up until November 23 last when a lengthy document from the residents’ group once again objecting to the contract being renewed did not even receive the courtesy of a reply from the Department of Justice. That despite the fact that it was a matter of official record that Ryevale House had no permission or exemption to operate over the three years in which Me Liberer was paid €7.5 million from public funds.
Offaly Independent TD, Carol Nolan, asked Minister Jim O’Callaghan last week if the contract was going to be extended despite the fact that Ryevale House “has no planning permission and is subject to an enforcement order from Kildare County Council.”
In his response the Minister stated that “all planning matters are between the Local Authority and the accommodation service provider,” but that he was “aware that the planning for this site is the subject of court appeal proceedings at this time. Any action that is required as a result of those proceedings will be followed up once they are concluded.”
Well, it would seem that the Minister did not wait for the outcome of the court proceedings that were due to begin, and that the campaign by the local community forced the Department’s hand and they decided not to renew the contract before any legal decision.
The Ryevale Lawns Residents Association issued a statement expressing their happiness that “this dreadful saga is now at an end.” In doing so they stressed that “€7.5 million of taxpayers’ money has been handed over for a service that the Department of Integration had been told was unlawful from a planning point of view before any contract had even been signed.”
As I reported before, when pressed on the planning refusal by former Social Democrat TD, Catherine Murphy, in April 2023, the then Minister with responsibility for IPAS, Roderic O’Gorman, had – as the residents’ statement puts it – admitted to her that he had preferred to take “the planning advice of the contractor rather than the formal decision of the statutory planning authority, Kildare County Council, who had already ruled that the contract was in breach of planning law.”
Ironically, given that O’Gorman was a Minister of the Green Party – which had claimed the franchise on all things environmental and conservatory of all things to do with the natural habitat – one of the first things that the owners of Ryevale House had done was to cut down all of the trees. An act of cultural “desecration” which the residents point out led to the destruction of “what was once the sylvan centrepiece of our estate.”
Mindful perhaps of the fact that Ryevale House had continued for several years to operate despite the planning refusal, the statement from the residents’ association points out that: “There is no point in having powerful safeguards in planning law to protect designated structures if those provisions are not enforced.”
That, as we have seen in similar situations, has been manifested by a failure on the part of local authorities to issue or – in the case of Kildare County Council where enforcement orders were issued – to ensure that the orders are complied with. And that in the absence of compliance on the part of the contractors that the local authority moves quickly to enlist the backing of the courts and the State to ensure that the unauthorised development is forced to close.
Part of the closure of such unauthorised developments is to ensure that the associated works are taken down and that the site be restored to its previous condition. As the Ryevale Lawns residents point out, that is now the responsibility of Kildare County Council and have called on their local representatives to act to ensure that this takes place.