A tenant who was left with very few clothes on the side of a busy road as she left her rented premises has been awarded damages of €15,760.80 by the Housing Inspectorate, reports Breaking News.
The tenant rented a property in Phibsborough, Dublin and filed a complaint with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) alleging that her landlord had wrongfully evicted her from the flat because she was legally residing in the flat.
She denied any idea of being a squatter, alleging the landlord had failed to demonstrate that she had ever been informed of the appointment of a liquidator for the property.
The RTB court was told the tenant had twice been exposed to men entering the stand-alone unit, which was once a store, in 2020.
During the first incident, in June 2020, the tenant heard knocking on the front of the apartment.
A group of men slammed and tried to remove the door, after which they managed to remove it.
She told the court that she and other tenants called the Gardaí and the front door was secured again and the men left, reports Breaking News.
Her landlord told her he was still the landlord when she contacted him about the incident.
As she was sleeping in August 2020, she was awakened by banging and punching and jumped out of bed where she saw around 15 men, all wearing masks, enter her room.
She said she was not dressed properly and was yelled at to get up and get out, but fell down, reports Breaking News.
She said they destroyed a number of items including the toilet, her mixer and sound system, and that she called the Gardaí because she was in real fear for her life when a group of unidentified men attacked her.
The court heard that she failed to pay the rent because the men damaged the fixtures and fittings in the apartment. She denied having had time to collect her belongings.
The landlord in this case has filed a number of court orders in previous proceedings against one of the apartment’s previous landlords; However, the court was satisfied that the landlord was bound by the lease in this case, reports Breaking News.
The court said it was ‘satisfied’ that the landlord in the case is bound by the lease, which was entered into before the appointment of the insolvency practitioner
The tribunal findings stated: “There is no real dispute over what happened as is evident from the videos. A large number of men, wearing masks, broke into the dwelling in this case and proceeded to damage a large number of items in the dwelling, including removing doors from hinges and breaking sanitary items, along with removing bannisters, beds and mattresses. The intention of these acts can only have been to render the dwelling uninhabitable and had the clearly foreseeable effect of inflicting considerable distress. This is evident from the videos submitted,” reports Breaking News.
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