A landlord told a judge yesterday that allegations he had entered a house while young girl tenants were alone, and on an occasion when one was in the shower, were attempts at character assassination.
Finn McCool, company director of an electrical engineering business, denied the claims and said in the Circuit Civil Court his former tenants were trying to make him out as "a bad landlord."
McCool, whose address was given as McCool Controls Ltd, IDA Centre, East Wall Road, Dublin, told his counsel, Bernard Dunleavy, he would always ring the doorbell before entering the rental premises on Mobhi Road, Glasnevin, Dublin, and was almost always accompanied.
He told Jim Sharkey, counsel for six former college students who rented the house, that he did enter their rooms to empty waste paper baskets, but this always took place on a Sunday when the girls were down the country.
McCool lost an appeal against a Small Claims Court decision to award the girls more than €600 each towards rent paid and tenancy deposits. They had received the awards after McCool refused to believe their story about a rat in their kitchen, forcing them to leave and find alternative accommodation. The girls had claimed they had been frightened and had to eat out because of a fear their food might have been contaminated by the rat.
Mr McCool told the court yesterday that an initial report of a rodent mentioned a mouse in the house and, considering the presence of a mouse to be trivial, had done nothing about it.
Later, when it had been alleged the rodent was a rat, he had done everything possible to put the girls' minds at ease.
He had brought in two pest control companies, a plumber and, eventually, had drains videotaped and scanned by CCTV in attempts to either catch the rat or prove it did not exist.
He said he had not believed there had been a rat and that the story had been concocted by the girls to allow them to breach their tenancy contract, move out and rent new property where each had her own room.
Judge Alison Lindsay, upholding the Small Claims Court awards, said she believed the rat story of the girls - Tracey Brogan, Knockmore; Sandra Goodwin, Behybeg; Edel Armstrong, Cloghans, and Eva Beattie, Ash Cottage, Quay Road, all Ballina, Co Mayo, together with Co Carlow pals Noreen Doyle, Coolnacuppogue, Bagenalstown, and Aoife Hayden, Ballinagree, Borris.
The judge felt Mr McCool had failed to act promptly to quell their fears about the rat. She awarded them their legal costs on the basis the unsuccessful appeal had been brought to the Circuit Court by Mr McCool.