Bid to evict tenant from ‘den of iniquity’ where body found

A house where the dead body of a young man was found in January was described by residents yesterday as “a den of iniquity” as Cork City Council applied to evict the tenant and regain possession.

Amanda Kenny, 38, was notified of the council’s application before Cork District Court in respect of 1 Presentation Place in Greenmount, Cork, but she failed to attend the hearing.

Numerous residents of Presentation Place were present yesterday as Judge Aingil Ní Chondúin acceded to the application from the local authority’s solicitor James O’Mahony.

The court’s order was for the local authority to take possession of the house, with the usual stay of two months on the order.

Residents, gardaí and council officials agreed that the present state of the house was horrific.

A catalogue of antisocial behaviour and unsanitary conditions in and around the house was also outlined in court yesterday.

There was nobody representing Ms Kenny to dispute the descriptions.

The allegations made included:

• Schoolchildren aged around 16, in uniform, descending on the house after school with slabs of beer.
• Late-night assemblies outside the house with people banging on the front door or climbing in windows.
• Fights and roaring in the early hours disturbing residents, many of them elderly, from their sleep.
• One incident of a man leaving the house with a young woman on a sunny afternoon and having sex at the side of the house on top of burst bin bags and assorted rubbish.
• Rats visible amid piles of rubbish, and a burnt-out sofa outside the property.
• Rags rather than curtains on the windows.
• The breeding of husky dogs in the house but no visible signs of dogs being walked.
• Young men urinating in the front gardens of neighbouring residents and occasionally dancing on top of wheelie bins.

The most serious incident to occur at the house was on January 14 this year.

Detective Garda Myles Moran said many incidents of antisocial behaviour over a two-year period had culminated on that date with the tragedy of a young man being found dead at the house.

“That is currently under investigation,” Det Garda Moran said.

Residents signed a petition to have the house repossessed.

One resident said: “We are very nervous in our homes and continue to be nervous of crowds coming up the street where we lived all our lives. We never had incidents like this prior to her moving in.”

Another woman, in tears, described girls in school uniforms coming in and out of the house.

“It is like a den of iniquity, that home. It is not a home. It was never a home from the first day, somewhere you would cherish. The whole neighbourhood is disgraced. We are mortified and we have no control over it. From the first day that house was allocated we are on tenterhooks.”

Michael Sheehan, executive housing officer, said Ms Kenny had been given numerous warnings, verbal and written, about dealing with an enormous build-up of refuse outside the property.

He said she was given a verbal warning exactly one year ago that she could face eviction.

Mr Sheehan said he was at the property on Thursday and it was horrific, as bad as he had ever seen it.