Woman and three children to be evicted from Galway home days before Christmas, Dáil hears

A woman and her three children are due to be evicted from their home in Co Galway just days before Christmas, a Sinn Féin TD has told the Dáil.

Galway West TD Mairead Farrell said she met with the woman last Friday and she was “visibly upset”, in particular because “she felt she couldn’t put up her Christmas tree”.

“She said putting up her Christmas tree, the Christmas lights, all remind her of the countdown of her being evicted from that home and including her three children,” Ms Farrell said.

The Sinn Féin TD was speaking as her party’s proposed legislation, the Residential Tenancies (Deferment of Termination Dates of Certain Tenancies) (No 2) Bill 2023 was debated on Tuesday.

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The Bill would implement an immediate and temporary ban on no-fault evictions, with the Government stating it was opposing the legislation.

As Sinn Féin turned its attention firmly backing to housing this week, following on from the failed no-confidence motion in the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee last Tuesday, Ms Farrell spoke of a litany of situations she is dealing with in her constituency.

She described a family with five children who have been in emergency accommodation for two years and a single mother with a two-year-old who is currently “couch surfing”.

“Another young woman who is literally selling her belongings in order to be able to pay for a hostel, night by night, because there is no room at the inn for her either,” Ms Farrell added.

The Galway West TD wasn’t the only member of the Opposition queuing up to point out the dire circumstances some people face, with Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire, Pauline Tully and Réada Cronin doing likewise.

“It’s notable as well, the Minister for Homelessness has left the chamber so quickly, he has no respect, he doesn’t care less,” Ms Cronin said, noting the housing minister’s exit from the chamber after making his opening statement.

Speaking during the no-confidence motion last week, Tánaiste Micheál Martin said in spite of claims from Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald that “the dogs in the street knew a riot was about to happen, the Dáil record shows that in the past three months, during Leaders’ Questions, she never once raised the violence she now says was obviously about to break out”.

During Leaders’ Questions this afternoon, Ms McDonald questioned the Taoiseach on plans to accommodate Ukrainian refugees and was keen to stress her record on the party’s number one priority.

“I raise the question of housing with you, Taoiseach, more than any other single issue, week in and week out here in the Dáil,” she said.

“Indeed, it is the issue raised with me on the ground more than any other single issue.”

Sinn Féin’s deputy leader Pearse Doherty questioned where Government TDs and the Minister for Housing was as the debate on the proposed residential tenancies bill came to a close on Tuesday night.

“You could fill this chamber 25 times over with just the children who are in emergency accommodation, just the children who will wake up on Christmas Day without a place to call home ... Even the British at the time of the great Famine had more compassion than what your Government are showing because they introduced legislation that didn’t allow evictions to happen at Christmas,” Mr Doherty said.

Speaking earlier, the Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien said he could “confidently predict” the Government would exceed its target “substantially” this year on housing delivery.

Mr O’Brien said there had been 8,452 completions in quarter three of this year, up nearly 15 per cent on the previous year and a total of 22,500 homes completed in the first nine months of 2023.

The Fianna Fáil TD also said the private rental sector as it stands currently “isn’t functioning as it should” but that SF’s proposed legislation would “make the situation worse”.

A spokesman for the Courts Service said later the only person who can execute a court order for an eviction or carry out an eviction is the county sheriff in Galway.

He said the approach taken by the office of the sheriff is to not carry out evictions in December and for most of January.

“Further to this the office does not have such an Order on hands to execute anyway,” he said.

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