A number of women, some with babies, wept in court yesterday when a judge told them he was powerless to stop them being evicted from their local authority homes.
Dublin Corporation had obtained District Court orders for the repossession of their homes, in the interests of good estate management. They had appealed to the Circuit Civil Court.
Ms Carol O'Farrell, counsel for the corporation, told Judge Liam Devally that under the 1966 Housing Act the local authority did not have to go into evidence as to the reasons behind the evictions. It merely had to prove the service of a notice to quit and demand for possession on the tenant.
Ms O'Farrell said the constitutionality of the Act had been upheld in a Supreme Court decision in 1980. Courts did not have a discretion to refuse an eviction order once these legal criteria had been complied with.
When Judge Devally asked if the corporation could, as a courtesy to the tenants facing eviction, explain the reasoning behind the applications, Ms O'Farrell said it boiled down to anti-social activities.
She said that in all such cases information had come into the possession of the corporation which suggested a certain type of criminal activity was being engaged in by the tenant or was taking place with or without the tenant's knowledge or consent.
Such information was inevitably checked with the Garda authorities and only when the corporation was fully satisfied that serious anti-social behaviour was taking place would such applications be made to court.
"Allowing the premises to be used for anti-social behaviour would be sufficient to bring an application even though the tenant may not necessarily be engaged in it," Ms O'Farrell said.
She said eviction was not sought in every case. Such applications were brought only in the more serious cases and the plight of the tenant, following eviction, was brought to the attention of the health board with regard to rehousing.