Kildare family given last-minute stay on home eviction

The eviction of a Co Kildare family was stopped at the last minute yesterday Tuesday when the High Court granted a stay on the proceedings.

Kildare County sheriff Eithne Coughlan had arrived at the home of Ian and Geraldine Fitzgibbon at Kerdiff Park, Naas on foot of an order for possession which had been granted to ACC Bank.

The house was due to be repossessed at 1pm.

However, as supporters of the Right2Homes campaign group gathered alongside members of the New Land League at the Fitzgibbon home, news came through from the High Court that Judge Anthony Hunt had granted a stay of execution for three weeks.

Members of the Land League and Right2Homes groups said they were preparing to video the eviction and place the video online. A similar video of the eviction of John Lloyd, who is blind, and his family from their home in Kells, Co Meath, last week has been viewed more then one million times on Facebook.

The Right2Homes group, which is attempting to crowd fund a constitutional challenge to to the legal measures which provide for evictions, said thousands of similar cases were currently working through the courts.

The group said 71 repossession cases were on the court list in Monaghan for Wednesday, with 49 listed for Thursday in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim. Another 18 were listed for Carlow Circuit Court on Thursday with Friday seeing five listed for court in Tralee and 182 cases listed for Limerick.

Brian Reilly, co-founder of Right2Homes, said a “tsunami” of cases were working their way through the courts and nearly each one of them represented a family who would be made homeless.

Jerry Beades, of the New Land League, said the organisation’s members had been in Naas to to challenge the Kildare county sheriff on the basis that there was no longer any legal provision for her position.

“However we got a stay in the courts” he said.

The court had heard Mr Fitzgibbon, a former employee of ACC Bank, had fallen behind on his mortgage repayments after he was made redundant by the bank in 2008.

Mr Fitzgibbon, his wife and their two sons had sought the adjournment on the basis that Mr Fitzgibbon had secured a new job in the UK and would soon be in a position to cover the €335,000 owed to ACC.

The judge said he was taking into account that Mr Fitzgibbon was giving an undertaking that if proposals he would submit to the bank were not accepted, he and his family would surrender the house at Kerdiff Park voluntarily.