Mick Clifford: Government may yet regret ignoring the history of evictions in Ireland

Evictions resonate so deeply with Irish people that ending the ban with no alleviating measures borders on recklessness

Tenants being evicted from a house on Hector Vandeleur’s estate in Co Clare in 1888. Irish people are highly conscious of such historic images — but we would do well to also look back just a decade, at the fallout from the banking collapse.

Early in 1923, as a new state struggled to be born under the weight of the Civil War, some of the old problems continued to surface. A piece in The Cork Examiner at the time reported on a letter sent to the Minister for Agriculture — a strange choice under the circumstances — about evictions.

The letter was penned by the chair of the Cork Evicted Tenants’ Association, Dan O’Connor.