Article updated: The structure is a mobile home surrounded by a cabin like encasement.
A 65-year-old man from Tipperary is facing prison amidst an ongoing legal battle with Tipperary County Council.
Sean Meehan built the log cabin in which he now lives after becoming homeless due to the breakup of his marriage.
Speaking before the Dáil today, Independent TD Mattie McGrath said Meehan was “refused both planning permission and retention permission” in respect of the log cabin in circumstances where the council has initiated enforcement proceedings by which the home is to be removed off the land by the 4th of April this year.
A judge has ruled that the land on which the cabin stands be returned to a green field by the 14th of March.
Tipp Midwest Radio reported that the former plasterer “has worked all his life and is now in poor health.”
Addressing the Taoiseach Deputy McGrath asked how “hundreds of modular units can be placed on land by the state without planning permission at Flood’s Cross in Naas for example to house refugees when at the same time the state are forcing a single Irish man who places a modular unit on his own land to provide his own housing needs is being threatened with jail,”.
McGrath said that Meehan was left to choose between ‘homelessness’ or ‘jail’.
He called on the government to introduce a statutory instrument “for the hundreds of thousands of Sean Meehans who are using modular [sic] who are using log cabins to house themselves in the middle of a savage housing crisis,”.
McGrath added that this could be done with the “stroke of a pen”.
In response Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Kieran O’Donnell said there was “nothing to prevent” people from applying to any local authority for permission to build structures made from wood.
O’Donnell said, “it’s up to each individual authority to assess each application on its merits. And I think that message needs to go out,” he said, adding that he didn’t know “the specifics” of Meehan’s case.
Last year on Gript Niamh Uí Bhriain commented on the case of Thomas Carberry from Carrick-on-Suir who also erected a log cabin after being unable to secure accommodation elsewhere.
She wrote: “Carberry says he was driven to build the log cabin after the council told him he could be waiting 10-15 years for a property. Now he fears that the council will tear his home down.”
“I’ll avoid the court if it’s taken down, but if I take it down, they’ve officially made me homeless,” he told the Tipp Today show.
“I’ve lived and worked here most of my life and paid taxes, and I can’t keep a log cabin that’s there because the council couldn’t fulfil their duties of giving me a house, and now they want it removed, but if I came in from another country, it would be handed to me,” he said.
“There is not a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t worry about it. Waiting and waiting to see what is going to happen. There is nothing coming and yet in the meantime they are going building these log cabins in Thurles for Ukrainians so how can they turf out people on their own private land but build them wherever they want,” he said.
“The councils can be ruthless in this regard, seeking to have homes built without adequate planning demolished even where the property is a family residence built on the owner’s land.” Uí Bhriain wrote.
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