Una Mullally: Dublin eviction raises questions about presence of gardaí

It’s difficult to convey the extent to which the property on Berkeley Road in Dublin 7 was damaged during the course of an eviction.

Last Wednesday, a group of men dressed in black entered the building and forcibly evicted the tenants while gardaí stood in the hallway asserting that the tenants had no right to be there – therefore tacitly facilitating the eviction.

On Thursday afternoon, one of the tenants, Henry Phiri, walked me through the building, where tenants and volunteers were literally picking up the pieces.

The banister was off the stairs, and nearly every door in the house was smashed or off its hinges. Every bedroom had been upturned, with people’s personal possessions strewn about. Two toilets in two separate bathrooms downstairs were destroyed, the porcelain bases smashed to pieces. A partition wall marking a divide between the downstairs front room and another part of the building was smashed through. In the next room, a large hole had been smashed through a wall, and two glass windows were also smashed. In the kitchen, a wooden kitchen table had been upturned, with the tabletop broken off the base.

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You are doing this to a small, young lady, a small person like me, all you hefty men.' I mean, this is injustice

Phiri showed me another bedroom, which had been upturned and was in disarray. He spoke about how the doors were now smashed, and how beds had been removed from the house.

Phiri believed that the extent of the damage made the property uninhabitable, at least until help came.

Music studio

The room of one young man, a musician, also doubled as a bedroom music studio, a setting that will be familiar to many artists who hone their craft at home. He was in the process of gathering his belongings and bringing them back upstairs. I asked him about the damage to his studio equipment, “Everything, like,” he said, his voice breaking slightly as he gestured, dejected, towards his bedroom, and spoke about how his instruments and computers had been upended.

Theresa Chimamkpam, also a tenant, said: “Yesterday was horrible, it was a horrible situation.” When she was being removed from the property, she tried to reason with the men attempting to evict her saying, “‘You have a wife? You have a daughter? You have a sister? And you are doing this to a small, young lady, a small person like me, all you hefty men.’ I mean, this is injustice.”

In the video of the eviction itself, where the black-clad men – some who curiously had tricolours sewn to their clothes – were taking mattresses out of the building while three gardaí stood in the hallway allowing them to pass, one garda asserted: “You don’t have any right to be here.” On what basis did the garda decide that?

Even in the aftermath, the tenants were still socially distancing and wearing masks while they cleaned, as were the volunteers who had arrived at the property to help the tenants get their possessions back together and somehow make their home liveable again.

No matter what happened, regardless of the circumstances, we still have good people

When I asked another resident, Elias Jegede, how he was feeling, he responded: “I’m not feeling good. But I’m happy for the achievement of those guys, what they have done so far,” he said, gesturing to the group of people who were busy inside and outside the property, made up of housing activists (including local councillor Anthony Flynn, co-founder of Inner City Helping Homeless), and altruistic young people who spontaneously turned up to the property after the video of the eviction was posted on social media.

“They are very great people. I love them,” Jegede said. “They stood by us since yesterday. I say one thing: we have good Irish people. Ireland is a very good country. No matter what happened, regardless of the circumstances, we still have good people.”

Spontaneous solidarity

Jegede is right. Some people turned up just to stand outside the property on Thursday in case their bodies were needed. Other young people swept floors, sourced a vacuum cleaner, someone else turned up with a toilet to be plumbed by another volunteer, mattresses were produced from a van. Thankfully, for every group of “hefty men” pulling mattresses out of the property while the tenants shout in distress, there are many, many more people in the city and elsewhere who will gather in spontaneous solidarity and support.

But that’s not enough. While the distress of the situation was eased by the extraordinary ordinary people who came to help their fellow Dubliners, and while it is encouraging that the deputy Garda commissioner, John Twomey, has ordered an urgent report, and that a criminal investigation into alleged criminal damage is now under way, there are now serious questions to be asked about the presence of gardaí at evictions, and the fact that such evictions are happening at all in the middle of a pandemic.