Hello, my name is Gerry Rice and I live with my wife Gemma outside the village of Drumaness in the heart of Co. Down in
Ireland. We are both pensioners. Since August 1979 we have been living in an old mobile school classroom because the officials in Down District Council refused to do anything to help us to have our former five-year-old house at 56 Carlisle Park, Ballynahinch, purchased in June 1976, put right. Council inspectors 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, are totally defective and illegally built. With very few exceptions, our local Councillors, mostly Catholic, 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 covering this fraud up from public scrutiny, athough Down District Councillors actually sacked their Chief Building Control Inspector at the end of 1984, eight years into my campaign for justice.
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?
Who Silenced John Hume?
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 "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.
Who Made Stephen McGonagle Change His Ombudsman'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 back to the 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 but I have to ask the question - why did the BBC Radio Ulster "Talkback" presenter, David Dunseath, later deliberately cut my wife off the air on a live programme?
Why also, did the BBC's reporter Maggie Taggart make fun (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.
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 three decades of battle for justice to get a decent lawyer with the guts to take on my case.
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.
This website is being updated but you can read the full shocking story in my book
HERE
for free.
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 "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.
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 back to the 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 but I have to ask the question - why did the BBC Radio Ulster "Talkback" presenter, David Dunseath, later deliberately cut my wife off the air on a live programme?
Why also, did the BBC's reporter Maggie Taggart make fun (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?
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?