Institutionalised Violence

down | crime and justice | press release Monday March 19, 2007 13:30 by Gerry Rice

Where Silence is Golden

How can the five main political parties in Northern Ireland succeed in bringing peace and prosperity here when they have actively succeeded in destroying the home life, prosperity and peace of a hard-working family as they worked unceasingly over these past 30 years - and still work - to cover up a massive housing fraud?
Gerry Rice.

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For most of these past 30 years the SDLP were in control of Down District Council. During all these years this party has covered up a shocking fraud involving building control inspectors employed by the former East Down Rural District Council who allowed building contractors in the '60s and '70s to use terralux blocks in the inner loadbearing walls of dwelling houses. Terralux blocks were never tested by the British Standards Institute yet building control inspectors employed by Down District Council criminally state that these rogue blocks did comply with those standards. These blocks are open-ended at both ends and are only a half-inch shell.
I am told that the first building contractor to build houses using these rogue blocks near where I live in the village of Drumaness, Co. Down was McGrady Brothers of Downpatrick in the '60s. By a remarkable coincidence, South Down MP Eddie McGrady never answered my letters when I asked for his help when he was a Down District Councillor even though as my former accountant, McGrady obtained the mortgage for the house I purchased in 1976, which, unknown to me at the time, was also built with terralux blocks. I found that I needed Down District Council to stop the smoke nuisance from my neighbour's fire entering my home through the terralux blocks in the wall dividing the two houses. Down District Council NEVER acted to have that nuisance stopped but they worked extremely hard, and successfully, to get the Commissioner for Complaints Report CC 19/78, which was in my favour, overturned. Eddie McGrady led at least one team to the Commissioner for that purpose.
McGrady, along with another councillor, even took me to the High Court for libel and looked for damages when I publicly asked them to have this fraud stopped. I forced them to pay off all the High Court costs.
The second contractor who built even more houses with terralux in Drumaness was Graham from Carryduff and the Chief building control inspector at Down District Council was personally involved in this work. This Chief Inspector was sacked from his high office at the end of 1984.
One SDLP councillor and two Sinn Fein councillors at Down District Council over these years tried hard to get me justice but were not successful. I have ended up with a criminal record, was made bankrupt and lost my defective home to the Nationwide Building Society which made a shocking mistake in taking 56 Carlisle Park as security for the funds of its investors. Nationwide made the mistake and made me pay for it. They sold my defective home and kept all the money. They also kept my deposit and all the money I had paid to them over the years in mortgage payments. This was criminal.
You can read my story on my website at www.gerryrice.net
Thank you for your interest.
Gerry Rice

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