Landlords with 21 homes will not be protected from eviction in the same way as the average debt-hit householder, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan warned.
Brendan Kelly (71) and his German-born wife Asta (63) were turned out of their home at St Matthias Wood, Killiney, on Wednesday on foot of an eviction order granted to Irish Nationwide, now Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, in June 2010. They have said they will camp outside the property “indefinitely” until they are allowed back in the house.
“We must distinguish between people who can’t pay and people who won’t pay,” said Mr Noonan today.
Mr Noonan said systems in place to keep struggling householders in their homes have been well thought through. He warned the Government was not in the business of rescuing professional landlords who refuse to pay debt.
“I think it’s been well designed. The Government has pledged, insofar as possible, to keep people in their own homes,” the Minister said. “We have no pledge to keep people in 21 different homes and we must distinguish between people who can’t pay and people who won’t pay.
“For those who can’t pay, we have a series of policies so that the banks will deal with (debtors) on a case-by-case basis to relieve the burden.”
Earlier today, the Occupy Dame Street movement today said it would continue to stand by the couple, describing them as the “poster boys and girls of the boom times”. Activists said they would go to the Kelly's home in St Matthias Wood, Killiney, this afternoon to express solidarity.
“We’re going out to have a chat with them even if the world is against them,” said Occupy spokesman Finbar Markey. “They did what they were told to do by the banks. The way that society works is that people aspire to a materialistic society based on material accumulation.
“Let’s not fool ourselves. There is a deeper psyche issue here. The Occupy perspective is that massive bubbles of credit have happened so many times over the last two centuries through people not learning. The banks are, in our mind, more culpable than anyone for this.”
Mr Markey said the revelations in The Irish Times this morning that the couple have or had 21 rental properties in Dublin and had by their own admission over-stretched themselves in buying their five-bedroom house in Killiney with a €2.2 million mortgage did not change their support for them.
Occupy Dame Street protesters staged a sit-in at the Dublin County Sheriff’s office yesterday as a result of the eviction. The sheriff’s office gave the go-ahead for the eviction to take place.
Mr Markey said the sit-in was not in response to their particular eviction but also the eviction of 32 other people from their homes this year and that they had already planned a sit-in before the Kelly eviction was filmed.
“It is important to understand that we object to all evictions and all brutality on people,” he said. “We felt the time had come. Where people are looking at that home in terms of fiscal value, we are looking at it in terms of meaning because it has a lot of meaning.”
The eviction, which was filmed by a neighbour and posted on YouTube, attracted widespread media coverage yesterday and was raised in the Dáil by Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald. She claimed the incident was symptomatic of the State’s housing crisis.
The incident also prompted members of the Occupy Dame Street group to stage a sit-in protest at the Dublin City Sheriff’s office in Temple Bar.
The Kellys are the owners of an extensive portfolio of property, according to the files in the Land Registry and the Registry of Deeds. The files, in which the couple’s surname is registered as both Kelly and O’Kelly, indicate that they bought 21 properties during the 1990s and the last decade, and remortgaged many of them with Permanent TSB in 2007 and 2008.
Mr Kelly told The Irish Times yesterday: “The situation is this they have taken my family home. They have also taken my livelihood. My office is in that house . . . all my papers, files, my computer . . . everything.
“The Government said it would do everything in its power to keep people in their homes. For a wholly-owned State bank to send these people [bailiffs] out here, to behave in the way they did . . . in an absolutely brutal manner . . . people are incensed and incredulous at what has taken place . . . we might as well be back in the 19th century.”
St Matthias Wood is an exclusive cul-de-sac development of five luxury detached homes situated off Church Road in Killiney.
Mr Kelly and his wife, who own a significant property portfolio in Dublin and elsewhere, purchased the house in 2004 with a €2.2 million mortgage from Irish Nationwide. At the time, the property was valued at €3.2 million.
The outstanding mortgage on the house is understood to be in the region of €2 million. The couple last made a mortgage payment on the house in 2009.
Mr Kelly, a chartered accountant originally from Sligo, said he was a landlord by profession and rented quite a number of “good quality” properties.
However, he declined to give specific details about his financial affairs outside of confirming that he held a number of mortgages with Permanent TSB and Bank of Scotland (Ireland).
Asked why he and his wife had not sold some of their properties to meet their debts, Mr Kelly said it was practically impossible to sell a property in the current climate.
In a statement, the IBRC confirmed that a repossession order had been served on a residential property in Killiney.
“The decision to repossess any residential property is highly regrettable and comes only after all options have been fully exhausted and the mortgage is deemed to be unsustainable,” the bank said.
Several financial advice agencies yesterday queried how a 63-year-old man, Mr Kelly’s age at the time of the purchase, was given a mortgage of €2.2 million.
The couple had originally operated a successful business in Germany, selling arts and crafts to German holidaymakers, under the brand name Irland Haus.
At one point, they operated two shops in the exclusive north German island resort of Sylt, and another on the shores of Lake Tegernsee in Bavaria.
Additional reporting: PA