A man who built a log cabin structure on his land in Co Tipperary has said he will go to jail next month rather than take it down.
Sean Meehan (65) has been ordered to remove it after failing to secure planning permission from the county council.
He is now facing jail time over the mobile home which has been clad with timber.
Mr Meehan bought the site and moved his mobile home there after the breakdown of his marriage and the sale of the family home.
He told Newstalk Breakfast the mobile home on its own was just too cold.
"I assumed when I went on to the site here, which I'm here five years, I assumed that being a mobile home it was exempt from planning," he said.
"I lived here for almost a year, I moved in here during the summer, so it was lovely.
"But come the winter time the water froze solid in the toilet bowl, my clothes ended up black coming out of the wardrobe.
"I got bronchitis, I went to my GP [and] he said, 'Sean you have to do something, you can't live in those conditions'".
'Logging out' his mobile home
Mr Meehan said he had previously seen a mobile home 'logged out' in an area not far from him.
"I rallied all my friends who are tradespeople.... so we set about this [and] we done it," he said.
"It's been insulated and cladded out - it's basically a mobile home, it's within the structure.
"If I was to open the front of the structure, the wheels and everything, I could actually take the mobile home out.
"It's like I backed the mobile home into this log cabin".
'I've got until the 14th'
Mr Meehan said he applied for planning retention, which is made to retain an unauthorised development, for five years which was rejected.
He then applied for full planning permission for the site which was also rejected by Tipperary County Council.
"They said aesthetically it doesn't look right, they said I don't show a social and economic need to live in this area and I would devalue the properties in the local area," he said.
"I've got until the 14th of this month to take this whole structure down, put the site back as it was as a derelict site.
"If I don't do that the 4th of April is my next court appearance, I'm going to Limerick Jail.
"This is not just about me it's about a lot of other people.
"The number of people that are in the exact same situation as myself is absolutely unreal".
'Nowhere else to live'
Mr Meehan said he purchased the site when he was stuck 'between a rock and a hard place'.
"I bought this site here; I'd nowhere else to live so I moved the mobile home in to the site with the intention of sorting something out," he said.
"It just gave me a bit of leeway to sort out what I was going to do.
"I wouldn't have had enough money to do much else with buying the site, the mobile home and setting everything up.
"That's the road I took; now maybe it wasn't a great road but at a time I didn't have a lot of alternatives," he added.
Mr Meehan said his neighbours have also signed a petition to support him.
