Residents face eviction orders as auction of homes cancelled

About 100 Dublin residents who had expected to face homelessness yesterday now face eviction orders from the courts.

The residents of 28 cottages off the North Strand, who were given notice to quit their homes in a brief letter from their landlord six weeks ago, staged a protest outside the hotel where the houses were to be auctioned yesterday.

Following the stance taken by them and a number of local public representatives, the auction was cancelled on Tuesday night.

The tenants of the small cottages received the following brief letter from their landlord, Mr Austin Kelly, six weeks ago:

"As you are aware the houses in Enaville Avenue and St Patrick's Avenue are up for public auction on 25th October 2000. P.S. The new owner/owners may or may not want vacant possession so I would advise you to look for alternative accommodation." The auction, which was to take place in a hotel owned by Mr Kelly, had been advertised in a number of national newspapers, including The Irish Times. The advertisement gave guide prices of £85,000 to £95,000 each.

Mr Aidan Murray, who is handling the sales for the Douglas, Newman, Good company said he and his client, Mr Kelly, were "forced to make an 11th hour decision" on Tuesday night to cancel the sale. He said his client's next option was to give formal notice to quit and if this was not complied with to go to the courts for a possession order.

The tenants had "won round one", said Independent TD Mr Tony Gregory during the protest yesterday afternoon.

A large proportion of the tenants are single mothers. Ms Siobhain Heaney (29), who has lived at 9 Ennaville Avenue for nine years with her sister, Pamela (19) and Pamela's 10-month old son, said they had all been "very traumatised" by the letter. They have no contact with Mr Kelly but his property manager told them the houses "were definitely up for sale".

"So we contacted our TD who said we should go to the corporation and get ourselves on the housing list. But the corpo said it would be four to six weeks before they could even assess us. The feedback we are getting now is that he [Mr Kelly] is going to get a court order to evict us." Mr Murray said his client had hoped Dublin Corporation would take on the tenancies cottages. He said the tenants, since they got notice of the sale, had refused to allow members of the public access to the houses for viewing, and so had forced cancellation of the auction.

"Another point I would like to make is that there was no way the tenants would have had to leave before Christmas. If we had gone ahead with the auction the sales would not have closed until next April."

The recently published report by the Commission on the Private Rented Residential Sector proposes mechanisms to establish a degree of security of tenure, though the Government has not said whether they will be implemented.

Mr Kelly was unavailable for comment yesterday.