Boycott of holiday home owners needed - says County Council manager

Salvadore said:
He’s a busy lad in fairness. Landlord, author and part owner of at least two other businesses.

Little wonder he hasn’t had time to think through his thoughts before he commits them to email
Click to expand...
While I disagree with him the fact that he’s a landlord in Galway City is hardly relevant to the substantive point he’s making.
 
Reactions: Leo
Purple said:
While I disagree with him the fact that he’s a landlord in Galway City is hardly relevant to the substantive point he’s making.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't call his point "substantive." It was a very specific suggestion of ways to make life difficult for people who are legally entitled to enjoy their own property within the law - just as he as a landlord is entitled to run his own property business without interference. He essentially wanted to see locals encouraged to target and intimidate those people - it had sinister undertones. Public policy on holiday homes is another matter altogether.

Simon Bourke: Holiday home owners have simply won at the game of life, it’s not their job to solve housing crisis

Even as a blow-in I’ve developed a level of disdain for them. Having wintered it out, endured the high tides, the eastern beasts, I’m entitled to enjoy the summer months in peace, we all are. But as soon as we feel the sun on our backs, the sand between our toes, they appear. Our neighbours.
www.independent.ie

I live in a small estate in a house approximately 200 metres from the beach. In that estate there are six, maybe seven, permanent residents, a couple of vacant properties, and horror of horrors, another six or seven holiday homes. More than half of those holiday homes are bigger than my house, fancier than my house, and better kept than my house. I have met the people who own those houses and they are all perfectly nice, perfectly pleasant and polite; probably great neighbours to those who live beside them for most of the year.

Last week, Tom Gilligan, the director of services for housing and roads at Mayo County Council, proffered an alternative solution to the nation’s ongoing housing problems by suggesting a ‘boycott’ of all holiday-home owners. This “peaceful, non-violent civil action” would have encouraged those living among Co Mayo’s some six thousand holiday-home owners to avoid any engagement with these “bad neighbours”, embark on public campaigns, host community meetings, and apply “social pressure” to the home-owners via open-letters and local resolutions.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register