What did Fianna Fáil know, and when did they know it? asks PBP as Gavin saga explodes

People Before Profit say Fianna Fáil have questions to answer over what they knew of Jim Gavin’s rent dispute, and when did they know it.

Sunday night’s bombshell of Jim Gavin withdrawing from the presidential race has blown the campaign wide open, and People Before Profit have said that the main party in government need to come clean about what they knew about Gavin.

On Saturday, the Irish Independent ran a story which alleged that Jim Gavin rented an apartment out to a tenant on Dublin’s Northside in the late 2000s, and that Gavin did not pay the tenant €3300 they were owed

On Monday morning, Minister Jack Chambers told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that the party only became aware of the rent issue last Thursday, a timeline which People Before Profit has called into question.

TD Paul Murphy asked, “when did Minister Chambers personally become aware of the rent dispute? When did the Taoiseach? Was anyone in Fianna Fáil or the Gavin campaign made aware of it before last week?”

Murphy noted, “as Director of Elections for Gavin’s campaign, it would be very unusual for Chambers not to have been promptly informed of such a serious allegation against the candidate if the party had knowledge of it prior to last week.”

“If Fianna Fáil was aware of the substance of the allegations from early September, why did the party issue a statement last Friday claiming that Gavin had no recollection or records of the dispute?”

Ballymun-Finglas councillor Conor Reddy added, “as a renter myself, I know how powerless tenants can feel when landlords hold all the cards – when they hold deposits, ignore your calls, or refuse to pay back what’s owed. It’s telling that Fianna Fáil’s presidential candidate would treat a tenant this way – and that his party would cover for him.

Fianna Fáil must “be held to account, but beyond that, we need a reckoning with a housing system that allows landlords like Jim Gavin to act with impunity while tenants are left in precarity and uncertainty with little recourse available,” the Dublin City Council member said.