Priory Hall evacuees may be forced to pay rent

SIX-YEAR-OLD Oisin Daly has full faith Santa will find his temporary address away from his Priory Hall home but his parents only wish they could have as much belief in the Government, local authority and justice system.

Oisin’s family are among the 240 residents evacuated from the north Dublin apartment complex condemned as a fire hazard and left in limbo with remedial works abandoned by the bust builder who had been ordered by the courts to put things right.

Today they will find out if Dublin City Council will continue to pay their rent at the alternative temporary accommodation where they have staying for the past six weeks.

Some are in private rented properties, others are in NAMA apartments taken from bankrupt developers while about a dozen remain in the hotels where everyone was initially put up. Among them are welfare recipients who have had difficulty finding landlords to accept rent allowance.

Dublin City Council, which gave planning permission for the complex and belatedly discovered its many defects, was ordered by the High Court to pay for temporary accommodation but with the bill already at €350,000 and no indication how long ‘temporary’ might be, the local authority is going to the Supreme Court today to appeal to be relieved of that burden.

Oisin’s parents, Stephanie Meehan and Fiachra Daly, are dreading the thoughts of the council getting its way. “We’ll still have to pay the mortgage on our apartment and if we have to pay the rent on the temporary place as well, that will be about €3,000 a month,” said Stephanie.

“We’ll have to default on one or the other and we cannot not pay the rent because that’s the roof over our heads. But if we default on the mortgage, that will hang over us for the rest of our lives.

“We’ll have to declare bankrupt. I don’t want to be 34 and bankrupt with no prospects of ever being able to provide a home for our family again.”

Ursula Graham led the protest outside Leinster House yesterday demanding that Environment Minister Phil Hogan intervene.

“The Government is saying it’s a civil matter and to get involved would create a moral hazard because any builder could then walk away from their responsibilities but we say the state is walking away from its responsibilities to its citizens.”