Much as I love Ireland, right now it feels like the country is being run by idiots, petty tyrants, and knaves. This is particularly true when it comes to the increasingly common vista of homes – including family homes – being threatened with forced demolishment during a severe housing crisis.
At the root of the problem is the nonsense that has overtaken planning permission in rural areas. Most people who haven’t been caught in the torment of the bureaucratic nightmare that is dealing with the local county council are unaware of just how ridiculous the situation is. Guidelines drawn up by the government, with a obsessive, often mistaken, focus on what they see as sustainable development, are sounding a death knell for rural communities because the whole purpose of planning now seems to be to force everyone to live in towns and villages.
Independent Tipperary TD Mattie McGrath has described the guidelines as drastically reducing the opportunity for rural planning permissions to build individual homes, pushing almost all new homes into towns, cities, and their surrounding areas. And Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice says that prioritising housing developments at the edges of rural town and villages amounts to “an assault on rural Ireland”.
That assault has real consequences. For the majority of people, who might never need to involve themselves with planning permission, the authority’s tilt away from one-off housing might seem like a bureaucratic matter- a fuss over design and build: but its about a far more fundamental right than that – the right of an individual or family to provide housing for themselves on their own land and often in a place where their people have lived for generations. But the current policy isn’t just short-sighted, foolish, and wrong-headed, it’s also morally wrong when it comes to depriving young families of their homes.
There’s a cold, hard reality to the stance against once-off housing, especially in the middle of an ever-worsening housing crisis. We’ve now come to the point where despite the abject failure of the government to ensure that its own people can find secure housing the state is actually threatening law and prison and demolishment against people who are simply doing their best not to end up on the streets, where they would join the ever growing number of homeless people, whose desperation is a stain on what is supposed to be a prosperous country.
The case of Seán Meehan who lives in Cahir, in Co Tipperary, has attracted national attention. Faced with homelessness, he put a mobile home on his own land and gave it the appearance of a log cabin by encasing it in wood. He has since been involved in a hugely stressful and costly battle with Tipperary County Council who have ordered him to remove his mobile home, even though the Council cannot provide him with alternative accommodation.
Even though Meehan says he was born and raised in the area – and his house is built on his own land – the council says it is “not satisfied” that he “has demonstrated a genuine social need to reside in the locality”.
What would satisfy them in that regard? Is being born and raised and owning land in the locality not good enough? Why are these ridiculous assertions allowed to stand? Isn’t a need for a house in the middle of a massive shortage a demonstrable social need?
A similar story is currently unfolding in Brittas, Co Dublin where Brendan McDonagh, his wife Ewelina, and their 2 young children Mia and Colin have been forced to move out of their family home or face imprisonment. As Fatima Gunning reported: “Brendan, a young father aged 44 has been advised he will face a custodial sentence if he does not remove the modest log cabin he has built on family land held for generations.”
Like Seán Meehan, the McDonaghs were told that they hadn’t displayed a social or economic need to live in the area – but four generations of their family have lived at Glenaraneen, and, in fact, where Brendan built his home is known as McDonagh’s Lane.
Yet he has spent a fortune in legal fees seeking retention permission to no avail, and has now been told that if he does not demolish the home he built for his family he will be jailed. His wife says the stress has led her to being diagnosed with anxiety. Of course it has. The family is now homeless and has joined the almost 60,000 other families on the housing list along, and the burgeoning numbers of desperate people who can’t find a home.
Brendan says that his parents lived next door to the log cabin when they moved in – though his mother has now passed away. Having adult children nearby, and grandchildren are a bonus, is a hugely important factor in assisting older people in remaining in the family home rather than having to move to assisted living or a nursing home. Why is the State to downright stupid and short-sighted in regard to these basic decisions?
He also says his initiative, building a log cabin with their own supply of water and sewage, cost the State nothing. He’s right – and what’s wrong with the system when that sort of initiative is punished and threatened with jail rather than rewarded? An Bord Pleanála did acknowledge that the timber dwelling was not visible from surrounding sightlines and was shielded by mature trees and a pre-existing boundary wall but gave the usual reasons about preserving the character of the area. All these decisions seem mightily arbitrary to me, to be honest: decisions about character and social needs seem a very subjective basis on which to destroy someone’s home.
South Dublin County Councillor Linda de Courcy, who is trying to help the family, said that it was “horrendous” that a young family had been threatened with being locked up in jail for living in their own home. Another local family has spent almost €120,000 trying to get planning for a home and business in the same area, she said, but they have also been refused.
“It feels so petty, so adversarial, the authorities pitting themselves against ordinary people,” she said. “The antagonism they show towards the individual or the family who just wants to provide children with a home and be part of the community. The court system is so expensive and exhausting too, people just give up.”
She is putting a motion before the Council in September asking them to desist from threatening the family with jail. “Where is our compassion for the homeless when we’re actually faced with a case where the state is threatening eviction,” she asked. “It’s so callous to threaten a father in jail just for proving a home for his family. He doesn’t want money or help from the government: he is willing to make any alteration asked, why can’t they come to an agreement?”
The motion she has submitted for the Clondalkin LEA meeting on 18th September is: “That the council ask SDCC to desist in threatening to jail Brendan McDonagh if he doesn’t demolish his home. He and his wife have two young children, nowhere else to live, and we are in the middle of a housing crisis with almost 14,000 currently homeless.”
A petition in support of the family has also been launched, but the bigger question is whether the State should pause in all this combative, adversarial engagement in regard to these builds while the housing shortage continues.
I fully acknowledge that, in the general scheme of things, planning permission is an important factor in development and the protection of both rural and urban areas and the wellbeing of those who live there – though it should also be acknowledged that the many refusals to build right across the country, including in Dublin, must be seen as playing a part in the press for housing too. But it is madness altogether to seek to demolish a family home in the middle of a dire housing shortage – a shortage which the state has utterly failed to adequately address.
Brendan McDonagh said that he and his wife and children had been taken in by another family even though the mother of that household had died recently. “The goodness of people despite their pain,” he said. Why can’t that same kindness and goodness be shown by the state towards a family who just want to be left in peace in their own home?
Mattie McGrath TD has been calling for planning laws around log cabins and modular homes to be relaxed to help in alleviating the desperate situation people face with housing crisis. We’ve already seen that the government can rush through emergency changes for modular homes when they want to. Why can’t the same be done for ordinary people who have built their own homes on their own lands?
There must also be a moratorium on demolishing homes during the worst housing shortage since the foundation of the state. Common sense, common decency, and small modicum of compassion demands that it is, at the very at least, considered.