In today’s society with violence and intimidation being a very real threat no matter where we live, our homes can often seem the only genuine refuge from antisocial behaviour. A man’s home is his castle and all that.
Alas, not even that maxim appears to hold much truth any longer as increasingly the thoughtless and unruly behaviour of others continues to encroach on the privacy and respite we seek in our private residences.
Alright, we don’t exactly all live in fear every second of our lives that someone is going to jump out and attack us. There are far worse places we could call home than Ireland, where the problems experienced by others make our own woes seem pale by comparison.
But let’s not kid ourselves, anti-social behaviour is a very real problem in this country, no matter where you live, be it a city, town or rural setting. No doubt there could be a million different reasons behind that. A poor relationship with drink and drugs, a lack of activities for young people to participate in, financial hardship, a plain lack of manners, the list is endless.
And the reality of the heightened sense of insecurity that people are beginning to feel in their homes was forcefully highlighted during two discussions at this week’s Carlow Town Council meeting.
Undoubtedly there was a very real sense of emotion and frustration being communicated by councillors as they discussed problems with continuing anti-social behaviour in some housing estates where there is endless trouble being caused for some residents.
Thankfully such incidents are a long way from being endemic and the reality of how anti-social behaviour can affect our lives is hard for many of us to grasp. Although it seems that ‘neighbours from hell’ stories appear in the papers every other week.
But if it was happening next door to each one of us, that might be a different story. Yet the local authorities appear to have their hands tied when it comes to dealing with unruly people in private rental accommodation who are making their neighbours’ lives virtually unbearable.
Councillors will be the first to admit that there is also a problem with anti-social behaviour in council estates but at least here they seem to have a modicum of authority to address the situation. Although, as the housing officer pointed out, it isn’t the local authority that has these people vacate premises at the end of the day, it becomes a matter for the courts.
However, when it comes to individuals in private rental houses it becomes a whole lot harder to enforce. The question is who has responsibility. Officially the landlord is ultimately responsible for the behaviour of his/her tenants, but these days property is rarely rented directly from the landlord to the tenant.
And the complaint from councillors is that when landlords are contacted about antisocial behaviour on their property, they invariably direct them to the letting agency and vice versa, meaning that any attempt to tackle a situation becomes so long-winded that there is a very real fear that the situation might have spiralled even further before anything actually gets done about it.
And of course, where the council used to act as a mediator between the tenant and the landlord, that responsibility now lies with the Private Residential Tenancy Board, a body tasked with resolving any disputes that arise between tenants and landlords across the country.
So instead of tackling a local issue at a local level, it is now dealt with by a national body, which doubtless receives thousands of complaints from across the country. So what chance does a complaint in Carlow or Kilkenny have of being resolved swiftly?
The solution doesn’t appear to be in the rental accommodation scheme, according to Cllr Rody Kelly, who said, after questioning the HSE on the issue, he was told that although there would be a certain amount of control gained, any process would once again be very convoluted.
All this will be of little comfort to anybody who is holed up in their home with loud music crashing through their walls, the sounds of domestic violence filtering through, or the screech of tyres waking them up in the middle of the night.
