Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

In the Dublin Rathdown constituency, which is not even my constituency, a family with working parents - one works in a bakery and his wife works in an insurance company - and two children have been evicted. They are HAP tenants, they have a court order against them and the sheriff is due around. The house is owned by receivers, Ernst & Young, which want to sell it. I contacted the receivers and asked if they would sell to the council. They said they thought they would get a better price on the market and they wanted the sale to be quick and therefore they would not sell to the council. I then contacted the Minister and the council and asked them to get on to the receivers and tell them they would pay the market price and that they are serious about trying to buy the property. That has been done but we do not know what will happen because it is entirely in the hands of the receivers. We need to supplement this with a first refusal option for councils in cases where people are threatened with eviction in order that a council has some power to ensure families are not evicted where it is willing to buy the property to prevent families being evicted.

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