THE tea cups and sandwich wrappers are being cleared away as men pull on outdoor coats and put the security cabin to rights. Up in the log cabin, some of the night shift are stretching and waking, while others arrive in cars at the gate, ready to relieve those who have been on duty all day. It could be the changeover on a factory production line but it is, in fact, the polar opposite. These people are giving up their time to stand guard at the home of Seamus Sherlock and his family in Feohanagh to prevent the Bank of Scotland executing an eviction order.
By the time Limerick Post readers see this article, the Sherlock family will have been barricaded into their home for 70 days.
Seamus started the ‘Life After Debt’ advocacy and support group after he lost his income overnight five years ago.
“My business was cutting turf and I supplied more than 400 people but in one stroke of a pen, the bog was closed and I was out of business,” he told the Limerick Post.
Seamus never received any compensation for his loss and got into trouble with paying the mortgage on the family home.
‘There was nothing I could do at the time but soon afterwards my son started working the farm and we started to get back on our feet. Now we have a five-figure sum sitting in my solicitor’s office and the bank are refusing to take it. I’m not looking for any write-down – all I want is a longer term to pay the mortgage”.
When the eviction order arrived on his doorstep, Seamus called his children together and told them he wanted to fight. “They all said we should do it. We have no choice. We have nowhere to go. We will resist peacefully if they come to put us out but they will have to beat me to make me leave and they’ll have to kill me to stop me coming back.
No sooner had Seamus rolled the silage bales in front of his home to form a barricade than neighbours began arriving with gifts of food. Within days of his stand being first reported in the media, friends, people he had helped through ‘Life After Debt” and complete strangers started turning up to volunteer for guard duty at the gates.
“The support has been phenomenal. This is the Ireland of concern and community that our parents told us about. People have volunteered to stand with me, neighbours have been bringing boxes of groceries, every morning and evening people turn up with hot food for the lads at the gate. I’ve been given a log cabin that sleeps twelve people; a security hut for the lads on duty; eight two-way radios, heaters and a generator – all donated by companies and people who want us to continue making this stand. I have to say a huge ‘thank you’ to everyone”.
Seamus says that while he is standing up to the eviction order for his own and his family’s sake, he is also doing it “for all those who couldn’t take it anymore.
“There are so many people going into the river because they are just crushed by what is happening. I’m doing of for them because they can’t speak for themselves anymore”.
