Killarney families face eviction as Cypriot investment firm moves to sell housing estate
From left: Alissa Downey, Simone Buckley, Kristina Mulic, River James, Brogan Kelly, Lauren Kelly, Marta Lakocy, Raisha, Raed, Rafa and Nur Syuhadah are some of the residents of Loreto Chapel facing eviction. Pictures: Valerie O'Sullivan
The community in Loreto Chapel housing estate is a microcosm of Killarney today.
It is a safe village, a community where everyone looks out for everyone else and the children play around the green together.
But life is no picnic right now for 14 families facing a mass eviction from the housing development.
Based alongside a banqueting hall in the former Loreto Convent girls boarding school in Killarney, the estate was built originally as a holiday home development at the height of the Celtic Tiger.
In 2019, 10 of the houses, and four of the apartments, were picked up by Cypriot investment company Xerico for just over €1.5m.
Today, residents in the estate include a software engineer and his family from Malaysia; a hairdresser from Croatia; an Irish data analyst; a chef a from Sri Lanka; a carer from the UK; a Polish machine operator; a builder and his wife; a college lecturer from Mexico; and a Polish woman who has worked in Killarney for 20 years.
Served with eviction notices, all are in the same boat.
Some are now contemplating returning to their original countries, while others are facing homelessness.
More than a dozen children attending the nearby school are also affected.
The notices, bearing the official stamp of offices in Larnaca, Cyprus, began arriving in June from Xerico’s Dublin-based management company and agents Home Club Ltd.
The eviction notices cited the sale or transfer of the property, or included straightforward termination of tenancies with the legal 224-day notice.
Residents wrote back seeking leniency or extensions. So far, none have received a reply.
The media too have sought comment from Home Club, and from Xerico, but again without any result.
Among the longest tenants, and the first to get notice of eviction, was River James, and his husband Dale James, a manager at Aldi.
The couple are guardians of Dale’s young sisters, aged eight and nine, who are thriving at nearby Loreto school.
November 1 will mark six years since the couple made Loreto Chapel their home.
“Companies not registered here with no stake in our communities should never have been allowed to profit from a crisis while uprooting families like ours,” the couple said.
“A lot of people blame landlords but the Government is primarily to blame,” River said to this reporter, while on his way to collect the children from school.
He would happily pay €100 more rent, but because of the rent pressure zone, the rent cannot be raised.
They are mortgage approved, but there is nowhere to buy in Killarney, where two-bedroom terraced houses in Woodlawn currently command over €500,000.
There is also “a lack of understanding” in a town where much of the property is owned by a small number of wealthy families.
“Not everyone is lucky enough to have parents with plots or houses to pass on, or to gift €50,000 to their children,” he said.
Killarney, which depends on bringing in outside workers for its bustling tourist industry, does not provide affordable housing for its workers.
River said: “Without the chefs and those working in the service industry, there wouldn't be much to come to Killarney for.”
From Sri Lanka, Fiona Inch was delighted to move to Killarney, where husband Heshan is a chef in the Gleneagle Hotel.
Heshan arrived four years ago on a work visa.
The couple had been seeking a family apartment or house for their two children, Leon, aged four, and Felina, aged seven.
The notice received at the end of September means Fiona will have to think about returning to Sri Lanka with the children.
While Hashan could get a room in the hotel or a house for himself, it would not be a family room.
“Either we will have to move to another city or county or we will have to go back. There is nothing in Killarney,” Fiona said.
Nur Syuhadah Mansor and her three children Raed, Raisha, Rafa, aged 11, nine and five, also live in the estate.
They joined Nur’s husband Syafiq, who came to work as a software engineer in Liebherr Killarney.
They must vacate by June 16 next.
Nur is pleading with the management company to at least allow them to stay until July 2027 when her eldest child finishes primary school.
They moved from an apartment in Killarney and the family love the open space and proximity to school and other children.
“We got a shock. We are here for just a year and now must find somewhere else.” Moving to Tralee may be an option for them. They have also contemplated returning to Malaysia — but her husband loves his job.
“If we had a house, we would stay here in Killarney,” Nur said.
Residents Ana Contreras Navarro, a public health researcher at UCC, her fiance Richard Gordon, originally from Kerry and who works as a contractor for the Department of Agriculture, and their son Fionn, who is just 16 months, were also served with an eviction notice. They will have nowhere else to go.
Ana, who is from Mexico originally, said it took them 13 months to find a creche for Fionn.
Richard has no immediate family left in Kerry.
“If this eviction proceeds, our family will have nowhere to go. We have no local family to turn to for housing for childcare support,” she said.
A working family from the Ukraine, builder Vlad, hotel worker Tamara, and their daughter Anna, said: “If we are evicted we will have to live on the street, in the literal sense of the word."
The family independently pays their rent in full and are reliable tenants. However, they have no relatives in Killarney, and nowhere to move to.
Mayor of Killarney Martin Grady said Killarney had no affordable housing.
Families working and paying their rent will likely be above any thresholds to make them eligible for social housing, which is the only housing under way in Killarney right now.
“It is very wrong for any investor to have a monopoly on housing stock,” Mr Grady added.
The made repeated attempts to contact Home Club Ltd, the property management company for Xerico, prior to the publication of this article. The company did not respond to the requests for comment.
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