By: Michael 0’Farrell – Investigations Editor.
THE refusal of a newly elected Sinn Féin TD to pay any rent for four years meant another deserving family could not be housed, according to the charity that provided her family with a home.
Violet-AnneWynne (Pictured right) – whose family was provided with a new three-bedroom home by a housing charity in 2011 – was warned of the consequences of her actions in June 2013.
Ms Wynne and her partner John Mountaine were supposed to pay €63 a week for the home when they relocated to Co. Clare with the help of Rural Resettlement Ireland (RRI), but racked up arrears of more than €12,000 before they were forced to leave by a court.
Rent arrears began to accumulate as soon as the family moved in – and no rent at all was paid for the final four years of the tenancy.
Ms Wynne last night insisted to the MoS that families were housed by the charity over the years she was not paying her rent, and that she is prepared to repay the arrears.
Correspondence records provided to Kilrush District Court during RRI’s legal action to recover arrears and evict Ms Wynne show how RRI repeatedly pleaded for rent to be paid.
‘I have to bring it to your attention that your rent record is simply appalling,’ RRI founder and chairman Jim Connolly wrote in June 2013.
Mr Connolly’s letter also pointed to the fact that his charity had recently had to let three staff go and was struggling financially.
‘This debt of yours will seriously hamper our continuing efforts to move families to private rented accommodation in the future,’ he wrote.
‘I have no choice but to leave it to your family’s sense of right and wrong as to what arrangements you must make with Rural Resettlement about this debt.’ The letter is one of 11 written warnings that RRI issued to Ms Wynne and her family before the charity was forced to seek a judgement in a bid to recover more than €12,000 in arrears.
In addition to written warnings, RRI field officers and finance staff repeatedly visited Ms Wynne and her partner. Despite these efforts, the court file shows Ms Wynne and her family stopped paying rent completely in August 2013 as they complained – sometimes via legal correspondence – of problems with the house.
The file does not appear to refer at any stage to a child’s illness and the hospitalisation of a family member, which Ms Wynne has this week told reporters was the reason for her inability to pay.
The rent of €63 a week was calculated on income guidelines drawn up by the Irish Council for Social Housing and reflects the fact that the household’s entire income came from social welfare payments.
But despite the low rent – and the efforts of RRI officers to secure payment – Ms Wynne and her partner’s arrears steadily increased. ‘Our meeting with you and our letters have brought no result whatsoever. You have made only three weekly payments in the last 18 weeks and your arrears now stand at €3,024,’ a letter from September 2012 reads.
‘You have made complete fools out of this charity which worked for years to provide you and others with beautiful houses.’
Another letter from November 2012 reads: ‘Your sporadic method of paying rent is resulting in your arrears constantly rising. They are now at a completely unacceptable level and I do not understand why you are treating your responsibility to this organisation in this way.’
Finally, after years of non payment, RRI took legal action in 2016 obtain-ing a judgement for arrears of €12,126.40 – the amount due up to June that year.
The charity subsequently obtained a court order to evict Ms Wynne and her family – although they did not leave the home until 2017, continuing to live for free in the home.
Until now the debt to RRI remains unpaid.
Ms Wynne told the Irish Mail on Sunday that she was now in a privately rented house and has had no issues with her current landlord.
Last night Ms Wynne – who will earn more than €96,000 as a TD – again promised to repay the debt by giving the money to a local housing charity and said that families were housed by the charity in the years in which her family was in dispute with RRI.
In a statement this week, Ms Wynne said: ‘I am more than willing to pay back the arrears. Doing so is made more complicated as the Rural Resettlement Ireland is no longer in existence. But if paying back the RRI isn’t possible, I will instead to pay the money back to a charity such as a mental health charity as those services are underfunded in the region.
‘My circumstances have changed now obviously. But at the time of the arrears, my partner was very ill with hemiplegic migraine, which leads to symptoms like those suffered by people having a stroke. He was out of work as a result and we also had a sick child too. We were travelling back and forth to Limerick every day with him to the hospital. It was a very difficult time for us but thankfully our circumstances have changed.’
In a response to questions from the Irish Mail on Sunday yesterday, Ms Wynne said: ‘I know of two families that left RRI housing which was subsequently filled by another two families,’ she said.
‘I would like to point out that after vacating the said property, RRI were able to relocate another family into this home.
‘Issues with funding of the RRI were evident from the beginning. There were several other organisations throughout this time that were trying to obtain ownership of these houses.
During such time, tenants other than ourselves were left in limbo so to speak, as to who actually had responsibility for these homes.’ Ms Wynne said she had explained at the outset to RRI that the family had no furniture, and that her partner and eldest child had health problems.
She also claimed that there were delays in RRI dealing with several problems such as a leaking pipe and unpainted plaster walls.
Separately, Ms Wynne this week withdrew criticism she made on Facebook of the cervical cancer vaccine, saying: ‘The points that I made previously in relation to vaccinations were not in line with party policy and predate my election as a TD by a number of years.’
