Aontú Leader and Meath West TD Peadar Tóibín Has called the demolition of the Murray home in Bohermeen, Navan, a failure. He stated:
“For sure the law must be upheld. People are not entitled to breach planning regulation. In this case there absolutely needed to be a significant penalty. But watching a family home being demolished when 17,000 people are homeless is a failure. More so when you consider that between legal fees in this 20-year court battle and the demolition fees this week add up to hundreds of thousands of euro. This will be paid by the rate payers of county Meath. Much of which its hard to see Meath County Council get back what has been spent.
A solution should have been found to keep the building in use for people who are homeless or who are waiting years for a house. I understand that the Murrays own the land, but surely some deal could have been achieved. Knocking a house in a homeless crisis does not make sense.
Its also worth noting that state agencies such as the DAA are in contravention of flight path planning permissions, and little is being done to enforce planning law there. We recently had a FG junior Minister falsely apply for planning for a house only a few miles from this house in Bohermeen and no enforcement took place. The Office of the Planning Regulator indicated in that case that there was no mechanism to re-open that case. If this house was an IPAS centre there would be exempt from much of the planning laws and would most likely be still standing. The council has said that if this house is not demolished it will be lead to flouting in the future, but the IPAS planning derogation is a legal flouting of planning standards and there is hardly a eye lid batted in government.
There are no winners in this mess, but another approach could have seen another needy family housed. Instead we have just got a costly pile of rubble.
