Every major political party in Northern Ireland including all those parties which constitute our governing body known as the Northern Ireland Assembly are directly involved, and co-operating with each other, in the vile coverup of a house-building fraud of major proportions. Even if the British Government has sanctioned this cover-up in order to save its Exchequer a vast amount of money in compensation claims, our elected representatives are totally wrong in causing house-holders, whose votes put them where they are, to remain victims of corruption perpetrated by dishonest, evil men.
"WHERE SILENCE IS GOLDEN"
is my story of fraud, institutional corruption and political thuggery in local Government in Northern Ireland in its handling of
THE CARLISLE PARK AFFAIR
When a group of politicians, civil servants and builders in Co. Down, Northern Ireland, cheated thousands of house-holders out of millions of pounds worth of property by causing/allowing new dwellings to be built with biscuits instead of using good solid bricks or concrete blocks as required by law, they did not bargain for the storm of publicity I would stir up, even sending my story around the world on the internet.
When I blew the whistle on a major house-building fraud almost 33 years ago, I was amazed at how many professional people including lawyers, politicians and highly-paid Government department officials rushed in to cover it up. Just how big is this fraud and who are all these professional people protecting?
My story also exposes the horrible culture of abuse my (Catholic) family and I have had to suffer especially at the hands of politicians belonging to the (Catholic) 'power-sharing' Social Democratic and Labour Party, the SDLP, who have done everything in their power for 33 years, yes, thirty-three years, to prevent me from getting justice for my family. To this day, no SDLP politician in Northern Ireland has taken up my case on an on-going basis. The one individual, a lady SDLP councillor, who did start an investigation, was ruthlessly stopped. Another lady councillor belonging to the Women's Coalition party, Councillor Anne Carr, who publicly supported this first lady, then left the Council altogether. Another SDLP lady councillor from Banbridge District Council, Councillor Catherine McDermott, who later asked her male SDLP Down District counterparts questions about this fraud during the Annual Party Conference in Newcastle, was told to mind her own business.
This website contains my personal experience of the greed, corruption and cover-up which is endemic in local and central government in Northern Ireland. This social and political disease existed before the Troubles began, was allowed to proliferate during the Troubles, is now out of control as the Troubles become part of Ireland's sad history and has now become a massive illegal and democracy-destroying industry which politicians of all political parties here in Northern Ireland are happy to either actively support or at least condone and ignore while they play, and are allowed to play, games at being government officials by their British masters. Yes, the people of Northern Ireland have an ostensible Government framework but as you will read here, in practice, it is nothing but a cynical charade to keep the bully-boys off the streets of Northern Ireland.
Incredibly, absolutely incredibly, now in 2010 and after trying to get a firm of solicitors to take my case against Down District Council during these past 33 years [thirty-three years] no solicitor has had the guts to take my case on to a conclusion. A number of lawyers did start investigating it on my behalf but always found an excuse to refuse to carry it on.
Hello and thank you for calling at www.gerryrice.com
Hello, my name is Gerry Rice. I live with my wife Gemma outside the village of Drumaness in the heart of Co. Down in Ireland. We are both pensioners. I am recovering from a stroke suffered in December 2008. Since August 1979 we have been living in an old mobile school classroom because the Officials and Councillors in Down District Council refused to take responsibility for the shocking condition of our former five-year-old house which we purchased in June 1976 at 56 Carlisle Park, Ballynahinch. No. 56 was the third of a block of four terraced houses, 52, 54, 56 and 58 Carlisle Park. Council inspectors, N.H.B.C. staff and Stormont officials who were responsible for awarding the building contractor a substantial subsidy, had passed our former home as being built according to the statutory laws at the time, only for us to discover that our house, and many other houses, were totally defectively and illegally built. With very few exceptions, our local Councillors, mostly Catholic and members of the Social, Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) on that Council, did nothing to try to force those Council officials who were and are responsible for this building fraud to do their duty or to have them prosecuted in a court of law. All the Councillors seemed to be interested in was assisting their Council Officers in covering this fraud up from public scrutiny. Eight years into my campaign for justice, at the end of 1984, Down District Councillors did sack their Chief Building Control Inspector following what a local newspaper stated had been a limited Government enquiry.
In 1987 I began gathering up all my many papers on this affair. I then typed out
my story on an old typewriter. This task took up all my spare time over the next three years which was quite exhausting as it was done under the shadow of all our suffering. Over the
next few years publishers in London, Dublin and Belfast refused to publish my story as a book.
In January 2000 I bought my first computer. I typed my story into the computer over a number of months while I was still recovering from being knocked down by a car in January 1998. I felt that this story had to be told. For legal reasons I have omitted some of the story and in the chapters I have included, I have deleted some place-names. Also for legal reasons I have changed the names of many real people involved in this story of corruption to names which are not connected in any way to any living person. Notwithstanding, I was taken for libel by "Mr. Big" as related in Chapter 17 and even though I 'wiped the floor' of the High Court in Belfast with his high-powered legal team, it is not an experience that I would recommend. These changed names are in italics. I have always tried to keep within the laws of this land in which I choose to live and I continue to do so here. Nevertheless I have ended up with a criminal record and I was also made bankrupt just because I chose to do what was right in the midst of so much wrong. Both these black marks against my character were wrongfully imposed upon me by Government agencies. My home was taken off me and sold, my thriving business decimated and because I relentlessly sought justice, people in authority here have tried, and are still trying, to make me out to be a crank. I have called my story:
"WHERE SILENCE IS GOLDEN"
Silence is Golden. Silence can bring peace of mind, silence can
bring peace to the soul. The silence in my story however, is a totally different silence. This silence brings hurt, frustration, misery, pain, loss and much more. This silence is destructive. It is the silence that surrounds official wrong-doing, official injustice, the silence that, if not checked and dealt with by the law, becomes institutionalised violence". It is silence which is financially golden. This silence punishes the innocent in order to protect the guilty who in this case are also powerful. I refused to accept this silence, I refused to be a part of this silence, and along with my wife and our children, I have been made to pay a very heavy price for that refusal. This is our story, a story that has gone on under the cover of the Troubles for over 33 years and is still ongoing. It is one of many such stories in Northern Ireland.
Here is a view of a good, thick, solid, legal brick. This is the type of brick which the building law contained in Housing (Owner Occupation) Regulations (Northern Ireland)1956 specified for the walls, all the walls, of the block of houses at numbers 52, 54, 56 and 58 Carlisle Park, Ballynahinch, when they were built in 1971/1972 under the auspices of the former East Down Rural District Council.
Here is what the building section of the Housing (Owner Occupation) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1956 states about how the walls in these houses should have been built.
The only other material, alternative to good thick, solid brick as specified in the written regulations, which could have been legally used and was even specifically included by the architect in his Specification for the Carlisle Park Development, were good, thick, solid concrete blocks.
A Terralux block consists of a half inch shell of very porous and brittle burnt clay. Terralux blocks were used for saving concrete in the floors of multi-storied commercial buildings, schools, hospitals etc and served to create soundproofing between one floor and the next. Imaginative farmers used them for draining water from fields and also for the floors of pig-houses for keeping pigs' feet warm. Unfortunately, equally 'imaginative' corrupt local politicians and corrupt civil servants colluded with equally corrupt building contractors to cause Terralux blocks to be used in the building of dwelling houses in the 1960s and 1970s in Northern Ireland instead of good thick solid bricks as required by the building laws at the time. The building professionals, ie bricklayers, plasterers and joiners, aptly named Terralux Blocks "biscuits". When necessary, bricklayers were able to cut legal, solid bricks to size with a bolster (broad chisel) using a heavy hammer. If a bricklayer had tried to cut biscuits to size using these implements, the biscuits would have shattered into little pieces.
Plasterers could not use ordinary plaster on walls built with biscuits because biscuits dried the ordinary plaster too quickly causing the plaster to crack up. Plasterers had to be trained to mix a special formulation of plaster which would dry more slowly.
Joiners were tortured fitting doors and window frames into walls built with biscuits. They had to risk breaking the biscuits apart as they made and hammered wooden wedges into the large holes in the biscuits to nail the doors and window frames into.
Party walls in attached houses where the walls are built with biscuits are not fireproof walls as required by law. Nor, as I found out to my very great cost, are biscuit-built party walls smoke-proof.
Here are three different views showing the ridiculous disparity between the size and shape of these two materials, the solid legal material which was only used on the outside wall of all four houses in the above-mentioned block of four houses for all the world to see, and the useless material, terralux, which ALL the inside, load-bearng walls were built with instead of the good solid material as required by law, which the outside wall covered up.
This is what the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints' architect had to say about this 'arrangement'.
This is what Down District Councillors allowed or commanded the former Acting Chief Building Control Inspector McCord to state in writing, dated November 4th 1986, to a leading member of my team following our meeting in Down District Council headquarters. Such blatantly confused and confusing rubbish coming from a senior government official stinks of guilt.
This is what Down District Council's Chief Executive Officer wrote to the former Prime Minister.
This is the result of the criminal work of corrupt and corrupting men in high places who are still escaping punishment through the corruption of our keepers of law and order in Northern Ireland.
Abraham Lincoln said, "To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
"I thought that I had a duty to help those that weren't as lucky as me."
So stated John Hume - in the beginning.
(photo of John Hume courtesy of http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/1548704.stm)
Why then did John Hume, later to become MP and MEP, and then to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, refuse to answer my letters for help in protecting our large family?
An Open University Moderator called my website content 'a gem'.
Liverpool writer, Jimmy McGovern, has written many dramas for television including "Cracker", "The Lakes" and "Hills borough", and when he read my story he said that he found it riveting.
I hope that you read Mr. McGovern's Summary - at least.
Who made Stephen McGonagle change his Commissioner for Complaint's Report CC 19/78?
After thirty years of fraud and corruption at Down District Council, I complained in writing to Tony Blair the British Prime Minister.
Why did the British Prime Minister send my complaint about the corruption in Down District Council back to these gangsters at Down District Council for reply?
I am so grateful and thankful to the BBC for their BBC2 programme about the end of February 1991 that made such an impact on my life at the time but I have to ask the question - why did the BBC Radio Ulster presenter, David Dunseath, later deliberately cut my wife off the air on the live BBC Radio Ulster phone-in programme "Talkback"?
Why also, did the BBC's reporter Maggie Taggart make fun on air (I didn't think it was funny) of my standing in the 1979 General Election in South Down against those whom I believed to be responsible for my family's suffering?
I will show who and what Mr. Hume was up against by first highlighting the work of Councillor Carmel O'Boyle a member of Mr. Hume's party, the SDLP, who was, and still is in 2008, a Down District Councillor, and even though Councillor Carmel O'Boyle was a full-time teacher, wife and mother, she made the time to find out what was going on in my case. Mr. Hume stated in his letter of acknowledgment to me that he would get in touch with 'his people' in Downpatrick and get back to me. Mr. Hume never did get back to me.
Councillor O'Boyle's strenuous efforts to help me were eventually halted in a manner which I have recently learned to have been exceedingly corrupt, collusive and an outstanding example of the "criminal activity" which the RUC Fraud Squad officers told me they found after they had studied my large file on this matter. Not even the police will take any proceedings to expose this fraud. Why? Are the police afraid of the same 'ogre' as John Hume?
Please read Councillor Carmel O'Boyle's strenuous attempts to cause her Council to do their duty. I am presently updating this information.
There is a truly massive house-building fraud here in Northern Ireland.
The proof of this fraud is built into tens of thousands of dwelling houses throughout Northern Ireland.
The outside 'skin' of every one of these defective houses is properly built with good solid and legal material for all the world to see but it covers up a massive load of rubbish behind and out of sight in each and every one of these defective dwellings. Each and every load-bearing wall, each and every party wall dividing these terralux-built houses - where they are attached either as two semi- detached houses or, as in my case, one of a group of four terraced houses - and each and every internal dividing wall, are all built with a rubbish material, Terralux Block, which the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints stated should not have been used.
All those responsible for this fraud are well-known to the police, yet nobody in authority will either lift a finger to expose this fraud or have those responsible for breaking the written laws they know to have been broken, prosecuted. On top of all this, I have been unable during over three decades of my battle for justice to get a solicitor/lawyer with the guts to take on my case. Yes, some have taken it on for a while, even up to two years, and then dropped it like a hot potato. For instance, a High Court Master (junior Judge) in Belfast, Registrar Hunter, instructed a solicitor in Downpatrick to get my case expedited, but the solicitor actually closed up his office and went to Belfast to work instead! WHY?
While paramilitaries were being condemned, and rightly so, by senior Catholic politicians and Government officers in Northern Ireland during "The Troubles", those same senior Catholic politicians and Government officers were assisting others to cover-up a massive housing fraud of which my family are victims. When I challenged this shocking conduct, those same Catholic politicians and Government officers then punished me as well as my wife and children in the most bizarre manner. The reason I refer to Catholic politicians is that our family are Catholic and know the quality of conduct we expect from politicians who profess to belong to the Catholic Church. But while John Hume former MEP and former MP along with his two fellow SDLP MPs even refused to answer my letters for help, Rev. Ian Paisley MP and Lord Molyneaux did help our family over many years.
On 25/4/2009 I had the following letter published in the Mourne Observer.
On November 28th 2006 I sent this letter to the British Prime Minister Mr. Tony Blair.
My letter was acknowledged stating that it would be sent to the Northern Ireland Office.
I didn't get any acknowledgement from that Office but received this letter from the Department of the Environment dated January 17th 2007.
The Clerk and Chief Executive of Down District Council, Mr. John McGrillen who is mentioned in the above letter, is a relative of mine. His grandmother and my mother were sisters.
I received this reply from Mr. McGrillen dated February 12th 2007.
I am retyping Mr. McGrillen's letter here for ease of explaining its total inconsistency with the facts of this matter.
"Dear Mr. Rice,
Re: Houses Built with Terralux Blocks
I have been asked by the Department of the Environment, Local Government Division, to respond to your letter of 28 November 2006 to the Prime Minister.
The houses to which you refer where (should read 'were') built under the Bye Laws made by Downpatrick Rural District Council in 1958. The terralux blocks used in the construction of these houses complied with those Bye Laws.
They had widespread acceptability and were used by various Housing Authorities, including the former Northern Ireland Housing Trust.
Currently, Down District Council is not in receipt of any complaints from the owners / occupiers of the houses in question.
Yours sincerely
John McGrillen
Clerk and Chief Executive"
Here you can see the full Report of the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints/Ombudsman in 1979. Some weeks before this report was issued, a man who was teaching my children at the time in a local school and was also a senior member of the SDLP called with my wife and me and in a whisper, smilingly told us that the Commissioner's Report was coming out in our favour. Just after the Report was issued some weeks later, and was against us, this same man called with us again and was profusely apologetic saying that he did not know what had happened. This was about the beginning of July 1979 and the change seems to have taken place just after the Conservative party had won the General Election in May 1979. While Labour were in power the Report was not changed despite repeated delegations being sent from Down District Council to the Commissioner/Ombudsman, but when the Conservative party came to power that all changed.
The worst of the Troubles is over in Northern Ireland but a much bigger mess has yet to be exposed and cleaned up. Unfortunately the people who are responsible for this exposure and clean-up actually belong to the government bodies who have been and are creating this mess.
Every political party in Northern Ireland is aware of my situation, but, while a few individual members of those parties have tried to get it exposed, their party machines will have none of it. Why?
Here is an undated letter from Caitriona Ruane MLA, the present Education Minister in the Stormont Assembly, to the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Paul Murphy MP.
That letter was answered on behalf of the Secretary of State by John Spellar MP dated February 23rd 2005 and reads as follows:
.
Obviously a dirty business which necessitated a hand-washing exercise!
The problem for the British Government is how it can state that the Department has no responsibility in the matter when, as Mr. Spellar MP stated above, "The local authority could subsequently recoup this [subsidy] from Central Government on submission of statutory forms which included certifications that the local authority was satisfied that all the relevant conditions had been complied with, which was a condition which had to be met ......"
Since those statutory forms and certifications were obviously and deliberately filled in with the intent to disinform the British Government surely this amounts to criminal fraud culminating in criminal theft by a local Council and must be the responsibility of Government, especially when the Government has been told about the fraud in detail so many times.
That the Government has decided to completely wash its hands of this shocking conduct makes the Government party to this fraud and makes victims of every purchaser of a terralux built house which is estimated to be many thousands of such houses throughout Northern Ireland. Such unaccountability for the criminal conduct of local authorities in Northern Ireland makes the British Government totally unfit to be imposing English Law on the citizens of Northern Ireland.
Liverpool writer, Jimmy McGovern, has written many dramas for television including "Cracker", "The Lakes" and "Hillsborough", and when he read my story he said that he found it riveting. I hope that you read Mr. McGovern's Summary - at least.
Gandhi said that injustice must be made visible.
Please help to make this injustice visible by telling your friends about it.
Please email this page to a friend.
Thank you.
Hello and thank you for calling at www.gerryrice.com
Hello, my name is Gerry Rice. I live with my wife Gemma outside the village of Drumaness in the heart of Co. Down in Ireland. We are both pensioners. I am recovering from a stroke suffered in December 2008. Since August 1979 we have been living in an old mobile school classroom because the Officials and Councillors in Down District Council refused to take responsibility for the shocking condition of our former five-year-old house which we purchased in June 1976 at 56 Carlisle Park, Ballynahinch. No. 56 was the third of a block of four terraced houses, 52, 54, 56 and 58 Carlisle Park. Council inspectors, N.H.B.C. staff and Stormont officials who were responsible for awarding the building contractor a substantial subsidy, had passed our former home as being built according to the statutory laws at the time, only for us to discover that our house, and many other houses, were totally defectively and illegally built. With very few exceptions, our local Councillors, mostly Catholic and members of the Social, Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) on that Council, did nothing to try to force those Council officials who were and are responsible for this building fraud to do their duty or to have them prosecuted in a court of law. All the Councillors seemed to be interested in was assisting their Council Officers in covering this fraud up from public scrutiny. Eight years into my campaign for justice, at the end of 1984, Down District Councillors did sack their Chief Building Control Inspector following what a local newspaper stated had been a limited Government enquiry.
In 1987 I began gathering up all my many papers on this affair. I then typed out
my story on an old typewriter. This task took up all my spare time over the next three years which was quite exhausting as it was done under the shadow of all our suffering. Over the
next few years publishers in London, Dublin and Belfast refused to publish my story as a book.
In January 2000 I bought my first computer. I typed my story into the computer over a number of months while I was still recovering from being knocked down by a car in January 1998. I felt that this story had to be told. For legal reasons I have omitted some of the story and in the chapters I have included, I have deleted some place-names. Also for legal reasons I have changed the names of many real people involved in this story of corruption to names which are not connected in any way to any living person. Notwithstanding, I was taken for libel by "Mr. Big" as related in Chapter 17 and even though I 'wiped the floor' of the High Court in Belfast with his high-powered legal team, it is not an experience that I would recommend. These changed names are in italics. I have always tried to keep within the laws of this land in which I choose to live and I continue to do so here. Nevertheless I have ended up with a criminal record and I was also made bankrupt just because I chose to do what was right in the midst of so much wrong. Both these black marks against my character were wrongfully imposed upon me by Government agencies. My home was taken off me and sold, my thriving business decimated and because I relentlessly sought justice, people in authority here have tried, and are still trying, to make me out to be a crank. I have called my story:
"WHERE SILENCE IS GOLDEN"
Silence is Golden. Silence can bring peace of mind, silence can bring peace to the soul. The silence in my story however, is a totally different silence. This silence brings hurt, frustration, misery, pain, loss and much more. This silence is destructive. It is the silence that surrounds official wrong-doing, official injustice, the silence that, if not checked and dealt with by the law, becomes institutionalised violence". It is silence which is financially golden. This silence punishes the innocent in order to protect the guilty who in this case are also powerful. I refused to accept this silence, I refused to be a part of this silence, and along with my wife and our children, I have been made to pay a very heavy price for that refusal. This is our story, a story that has gone on under the cover of the Troubles for over 33 years and is still ongoing. It is one of many such stories in Northern Ireland.
Here is a view of a good, thick, solid, legal brick. This is the type of brick which the building law contained in Housing (Owner Occupation) Regulations (Northern Ireland)1956 specified for the walls, all the walls, of the block of houses at numbers 52, 54, 56 and 58 Carlisle Park, Ballynahinch, when they were built in 1971/1972 under the auspices of the former East Down Rural District Council.
Here is what the building section of the Housing (Owner Occupation) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1956 states about how the walls in these houses should have been built.
The only other material, alternative to good thick, solid brick as specified in the written regulations, which could have been legally used and was even specifically included by the architect in his Specification for the Carlisle Park Development, were good, thick, solid concrete blocks.
A Terralux block consists of a half inch shell of very porous and brittle burnt clay. Terralux blocks were used for saving concrete in the floors of multi-storied commercial buildings, schools, hospitals etc and served to create soundproofing between one floor and the next. Imaginative farmers used them for draining water from fields and also for the floors of pig-houses for keeping pigs' feet warm. Unfortunately, equally 'imaginative' corrupt local politicians and corrupt civil servants colluded with equally corrupt building contractors to cause Terralux blocks to be used in the building of dwelling houses in the 1960s and 1970s in Northern Ireland instead of good thick solid bricks as required by the building laws at the time. The building professionals, ie bricklayers, plasterers and joiners, aptly named Terralux Blocks "biscuits". When necessary, bricklayers were able to cut legal, solid bricks to size with a bolster (broad chisel) using a heavy hammer. If a bricklayer had tried to cut biscuits to size using these implements, the biscuits would have shattered into little pieces.
Plasterers could not use ordinary plaster on walls built with biscuits because biscuits dried the ordinary plaster too quickly causing the plaster to crack up. Plasterers had to be trained to mix a special formulation of plaster which would dry more slowly.
Joiners were tortured fitting doors and window frames into walls built with biscuits. They had to risk breaking the biscuits apart as they made and hammered wooden wedges into the large holes in the biscuits to nail the doors and window frames into.
Party walls in attached houses where the walls are built with biscuits are not fireproof walls as required by law. Nor, as I found out to my very great cost, are biscuit-built party walls smoke-proof.
Here are three different views showing the ridiculous disparity between the size and shape of these two materials, the solid legal material which was only used on the outside wall of all four houses in the above-mentioned block of four houses for all the world to see, and the useless material, terralux, which ALL the inside, load-bearng walls were built with instead of the good solid material as required by law, which the outside wall covered up.
This is what the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints' architect had to say about this 'arrangement'.
This is what Down District Councillors allowed or commanded the former Acting Chief Building Control Inspector McCord to state in writing, dated November 4th 1986, to a leading member of my team following our meeting in Down District Council headquarters. Such blatantly confused and confusing rubbish coming from a senior government official stinks of guilt.
This is what Down District Council's Chief Executive Officer wrote to the former Prime Minister.
This is the result of the criminal work of corrupt and corrupting men in high places who are still escaping punishment through the corruption of our keepers of law and order in Northern Ireland.
Abraham Lincoln said, "To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
"I thought that I had a duty to help those that weren't as lucky as me."
So stated John Hume - in the beginning.
(photo of John Hume courtesy of http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/1548704.stm)
Why then did John Hume, later to become MP and MEP, and then to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, refuse to answer my letters for help in protecting our large family?
An Open University Moderator called my website content 'a gem'.
Liverpool writer, Jimmy McGovern, has written many dramas for television including "Cracker", "The Lakes" and "Hills borough", and when he read my story he said that he found it riveting.
I hope that you read Mr. McGovern's Summary - at least.
Who made Stephen McGonagle change his Commissioner for Complaint's Report CC 19/78?
After thirty years of fraud and corruption at Down District Council, I complained in writing to Tony Blair the British Prime Minister.
Why did the British Prime Minister send my complaint about the corruption in Down District Council back to these gangsters at Down District Council for reply?
I am so grateful and thankful to the BBC for their BBC2 programme about the end of February 1991 that made such an impact on my life at the time but I have to ask the question - why did the BBC Radio Ulster presenter, David Dunseath, later deliberately cut my wife off the air on the live BBC Radio Ulster phone-in programme "Talkback"?
Why also, did the BBC's reporter Maggie Taggart make fun on air (I didn't think it was funny) of my standing in the 1979 General Election in South Down against those whom I believed to be responsible for my family's suffering?
I will show who and what Mr. Hume was up against by first highlighting the work of Councillor Carmel O'Boyle a member of Mr. Hume's party, the SDLP, who was, and still is in 2008, a Down District Councillor, and even though Councillor Carmel O'Boyle was a full-time teacher, wife and mother, she made the time to find out what was going on in my case. Mr. Hume stated in his letter of acknowledgment to me that he would get in touch with 'his people' in Downpatrick and get back to me. Mr. Hume never did get back to me.
Councillor O'Boyle's strenuous efforts to help me were eventually halted in a manner which I have recently learned to have been exceedingly corrupt, collusive and an outstanding example of the "criminal activity" which the RUC Fraud Squad officers told me they found after they had studied my large file on this matter. Not even the police will take any proceedings to expose this fraud. Why? Are the police afraid of the same 'ogre' as John Hume?
Please read Councillor Carmel O'Boyle's strenuous attempts to cause her Council to do their duty. I am presently updating this information.
There is a truly massive house-building fraud here in Northern Ireland.
The proof of this fraud is built into tens of thousands of dwelling houses throughout Northern Ireland.
The outside 'skin' of every one of these defective houses is properly built with good solid and legal material for all the world to see but it covers up a massive load of rubbish behind and out of sight in each and every one of these defective dwellings. Each and every load-bearing wall, each and every party wall dividing these terralux-built houses - where they are attached either as two semi- detached houses or, as in my case, one of a group of four terraced houses - and each and every internal dividing wall, are all built with a rubbish material, Terralux Block, which the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints stated should not have been used.
All those responsible for this fraud are well-known to the police, yet nobody in authority will either lift a finger to expose this fraud or have those responsible for breaking the written laws they know to have been broken, prosecuted. On top of all this, I have been unable during over three decades of my battle for justice to get a solicitor/lawyer with the guts to take on my case. Yes, some have taken it on for a while, even up to two years, and then dropped it like a hot potato. For instance, a High Court Master (junior Judge) in Belfast, Registrar Hunter, instructed a solicitor in Downpatrick to get my case expedited, but the solicitor actually closed up his office and went to Belfast to work instead! WHY?
While paramilitaries were being condemned, and rightly so, by senior Catholic politicians and Government officers in Northern Ireland during "The Troubles", those same senior Catholic politicians and Government officers were assisting others to cover-up a massive housing fraud of which my family are victims. When I challenged this shocking conduct, those same Catholic politicians and Government officers then punished me as well as my wife and children in the most bizarre manner. The reason I refer to Catholic politicians is that our family are Catholic and know the quality of conduct we expect from politicians who profess to belong to the Catholic Church. But while John Hume former MEP and former MP along with his two fellow SDLP MPs even refused to answer my letters for help, Rev. Ian Paisley MP and Lord Molyneaux did help our family over many years.
On 25/4/2009 I had the following letter published in the Mourne Observer.
On November 28th 2006 I sent this letter to the British Prime Minister Mr. Tony Blair.
My letter was acknowledged stating that it would be sent to the Northern Ireland Office.
I didn't get any acknowledgement from that Office but received this letter from the Department of the Environment dated January 17th 2007.
The Clerk and Chief Executive of Down District Council, Mr. John McGrillen who is mentioned in the above letter, is a relative of mine. His grandmother and my mother were sisters.
I received this reply from Mr. McGrillen dated February 12th 2007.
I am retyping Mr. McGrillen's letter here for ease of explaining its total inconsistency with the facts of this matter.
"Dear Mr. Rice,
Re: Houses Built with Terralux Blocks
I have been asked by the Department of the Environment, Local Government Division, to respond to your letter of 28 November 2006 to the Prime Minister.
The houses to which you refer where (should read 'were') built under the Bye Laws made by Downpatrick Rural District Council in 1958. The terralux blocks used in the construction of these houses complied with those Bye Laws.
They had widespread acceptability and were used by various Housing Authorities, including the former Northern Ireland Housing Trust.
Currently, Down District Council is not in receipt of any complaints from the owners / occupiers of the houses in question.
Yours sincerely
John McGrillen
Clerk and Chief Executive"
Here you can see the full Report of the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints/Ombudsman in 1979. Some weeks before this report was issued, a man who was teaching my children at the time in a local school and was also a senior member of the SDLP called with my wife and me and in a whisper, smilingly told us that the Commissioner's Report was coming out in our favour. Just after the Report was issued some weeks later, and was against us, this same man called with us again and was profusely apologetic saying that he did not know what had happened. This was about the beginning of July 1979 and the change seems to have taken place just after the Conservative party had won the General Election in May 1979. While Labour were in power the Report was not changed despite repeated delegations being sent from Down District Council to the Commissioner/Ombudsman, but when the Conservative party came to power that all changed.
The worst of the Troubles is over in Northern Ireland but a much bigger mess has yet to be exposed and cleaned up. Unfortunately the people who are responsible for this exposure and clean-up actually belong to the government bodies who have been and are creating this mess.
Every political party in Northern Ireland is aware of my situation, but, while a few individual members of those parties have tried to get it exposed, their party machines will have none of it. Why?
Here is an undated letter from Caitriona Ruane MLA, the present Education Minister in the Stormont Assembly, to the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Paul Murphy MP.
That letter was answered on behalf of the Secretary of State by John Spellar MP dated February 23rd 2005 and reads as follows:
.Obviously a dirty business which necessitated a hand-washing exercise!
The problem for the British Government is how it can state that the Department has no responsibility in the matter when, as Mr. Spellar MP stated above, "The local authority could subsequently recoup this [subsidy] from Central Government on submission of statutory forms which included certifications that the local authority was satisfied that all the relevant conditions had been complied with, which was a condition which had to be met ......"
Since those statutory forms and certifications were obviously and deliberately filled in with the intent to disinform the British Government surely this amounts to criminal fraud culminating in criminal theft by a local Council and must be the responsibility of Government, especially when the Government has been told about the fraud in detail so many times.
That the Government has decided to completely wash its hands of this shocking conduct makes the Government party to this fraud and makes victims of every purchaser of a terralux built house which is estimated to be many thousands of such houses throughout Northern Ireland. Such unaccountability for the criminal conduct of local authorities in Northern Ireland makes the British Government totally unfit to be imposing English Law on the citizens of Northern Ireland.
Liverpool writer, Jimmy McGovern, has written many dramas for television including "Cracker", "The Lakes" and "Hillsborough", and when he read my story he said that he found it riveting. I hope that you read Mr. McGovern's Summary - at least.
Gandhi said that injustice must be made visible.
Please help to make this injustice visible by telling your friends about it.
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Thank you.