Whatever the circumstances, it seems deeply morally wrong to demolish a 5 bedroom family home in Meath in the midst of an acute and never-ending housing crisis – a crisis which the state has failed to adequately tackle or even face up to with honesty.
It is not the first time that such a case has attracted significant public attention. The plight of Tipperary man, Seán Meehan, who is being relentlessly pursued by the local authorities for putting a mobile home-cum-cottage on his own land has attracted widespread sympathy and support. He too is living with the constant stress and fear that his home will be demolished, leaving him – a man in his late 60s – with nowhere to live.
Another family, Brendan McDonagh, his wife Ewelina, and their 2 young children Mia and Colin, were forced to move out of their family home or face imprisonment – and then forced to demolish the modest log cabin they had built on family land held for generations. They even had to pay for the cost of demolition on top of the mounting legal costs of fighting what seems like an increasingly adversarial and cold-hearted state apparatus.
But critics say that the Murray family home in Bohermeen in Co Meath was never going to get retention – the permission that is sometimes granted after the event, when a home is built without planning approval from the local authorities. The Murrays were refused permission to construct a 283 square metre dormer house in 2006, but eventually constructed a property almost twice that size. However, they say that the constant refusal of planning permission frustrated them into taking that action – and it is true that there is a deliberate policy now well established in the county councils of refusing once-off houses in rural areas, even to families who have lived there for generations.
The Independent reported today that: “At around 10.30am, local gardaí made their way up the long driveway. Within 10 minutes, the workers departed, and the property formally passed into the possession of the local authority.”
By 11am, a convoy of 10 vans from a private security firm, led by three cars, arrived at the house while gardaí and council officials remained nearby. Several of the vans were towing floodlighting equipment, indicating preparations for extended on‑site work.
It is understood that ESB Networks will disconnect the electricity supply in due course, after which a demolition crew is expected to begin work on knocking down the house.
Evictions, and the use of the battering ram to demolish family homes, have profound historical resonances in Ireland, of course, evoking almost visceral reactions from recounting of the crowbar brigade and the dispossessions of the time around and during the Great Hunger. However palatial an illegal build, our natural sympathies tend to be with families who are seeing their possessions being put out on the road by the agents of the state.
The Murrays say they are being “treated worse than the Kinehans” and that, at the end of a twenty-year battle, they asked the council to donate their home to charity rather than see the spacious house, estimated to be worth €1 million, demolished. There seems to be widespread support for the view that the destruction of a family home – given that the state is failing so many homeless people – would be galling and unacceptable but the process is underway it seems.
Rose Murray’s description of her son being ‘put out on the street’, of her fear of being arrested, and of 20 men with balaclavas being sent to oversee the family’s removal from their home engendered considerable public sympathy today.
On the other hand, in all the attention being paid to the eviction and demolition in Bohermeen, some are pointing to the legitimacy of the council’s actions given that planning plays an important role in bringing clarity and order to house building. They argue that allowing individuals to flout the law will simply lead to contagion and chaos.
But, without wishing to return incessantly to the issue of immigration, recent revelations regarding the seeming indifference of the state towards the absolute disregard often shown for planning requirements when it comes to asylum accommodation provide a stark contrast to how citizens are treated if they attempt the same disregard.
My colleague, Matt Treacy, whose tireless efforts in regard to exposing the extent of the asylum gravy train have ensured a broader public awareness of the costly fiasco, has repeatedly noted that when it comes to planning permission, sticking to the rules only seems to be for the little people.
Consider that we now know that the Golf Hotel on the controversial Citywest Asylum campus has never had the exemptions from planning permission and the other requirements that are a condition for the granting of a contract from the Department of Integration to accommodate asylum seekers – despite providing asylum services since 2022. Yet no-one is knocking down the Golf Hotel in Citywest.
Also consider that Ardee in Co Louth, it was denied for years to locals that a ‘Banty’ MacEnaney-owned premises was being used to house asylum seekers – and that Setanta House operated as a provider of asylum services “under State contract from April 2019, despite the fact that there is no planning permission on record, no declaration that the premises was exempted until November 2024, and that there is no publicly available exemption covering 2019–2024.”
In Wicklow, local Councillor, Gerry O’Neill, ‘has expressed his frustration at continued delays in the council’s legal action against an unauthorised development in Kippure, County Wicklow’, Fatima Gunning reported last November.
65 houses were constructed without planning permission on the site of Kippure Lodge, which is currently being used to accommodate asylum seekers. Proceeds have been lodged by lawyers for Wicklow County Council to stop Tondo Ltd (Kippure Lodge), the owners of the site, after orders from the planning executive to remove the development were ignored.
After the case, which came before the High Court yesterday, was adjourned for a third time, Cllr. O’Neill said in a statement that the Kippure Lodge owners “went to the Courts only last Friday with an affidavit and Wicklow County Council sought an adjournment to study the paperwork. This is now the third adjournment this year and the Developers were first issued with enforcement notices in May 2024, having being issued with warning letters in June 2022,” he said.
There are no masked men or bulldozers being brought in to flatten anything in Kippure – just as there is no such demolition of unauthorised builds which still standing at Chianti Park, in Brittas, County Dublin, despite an order to tear them down as the were not legally constructed.
In general, there is the most egregious decision to grant sweeping planning exemptions to asylum accommodation in general, despite continued local opposition.
The law is strictly applied to the ordinary family, it seems, but not to the asylum services provider. That hardly seems fair. One might be brought to speculate that if the Murrays had simply started asylum accommodation provision in their illegally constructed home, they might be facing a different outcome today.