Brendan McDonogh, a welder and father-of-two from Brittas in Co Dublin, was ordered to demolish the two-bed cabin he erected in 2017 because it breached planning laws.
He built it on family land in 2017 close to his parents' house and applied to his local authority South Dublin County Council to retain it, but he was told it did not comply with regional guidelines.
Just after Christmas this year, he took it apart and it now lies demolished under plastic sheeting.
A wooden fence separates it from where his father lives, further up the driveway and it was shielded from the road by trees and shrubs.
While he welcomes the proposed changes to the law which could ease the building of cabins and modular homes in back gardens, he says for his family, it is too little, too late.
He also says the 40 square metre limit would only be suitable for one-bedroom homes or offices, whereas his structure of more than 60 metre square allowed him to build a bedroom for his two children, a nine-year-old daughter and six-year-old son, while still leaving them space to play outside.
"We tried everything to work with them to keep our home," he says. "They didn't care that we were newly-weds and that this was our family home and family ground, and that I was a self-employed welder."
Mr McDonogh says his job paid him above the threshold that would have entitled him to the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP), so the young family had been finding it difficult to rent in the area.
The cabin had seemed the perfect solution and he had it built and finished to a high spec.
Now he says he is working just three days a week as a PAYE worker in order to qualify for the benefits the family now needs in order to try to get accommodation.
He says they have been staying with a friend for the past year and have been left effectively homeless.
"I had to give up everything and become nothing to get something," he says, pointing to the rubble and poured concrete where the cabin once stood.
"This is what we're left with. This pile of wood. Our beautiful little home is gone."
He hopes further changes in the planning laws might be looked at and he says he would prefer to have assistance to rebuild his home and live independently rather than joining the housing list or having to look for accommodation through HAP.
Mr McDonogh says he has lived in the area his whole life and is in demand as a welder from numerous businesses and farms in the area.
He also had to nurse his mother who died recently from pancreatic cancer. He says living nearby would have been helpful to her and to his father.
"My mother was already in bad health and to see her son and her grandkids to go homeless, to be left with nothing was heartbreaking for her."
He said he has met many politicians about his case over the last eight years. He said there was a lot of talk, but in the end, no one could do anything to help. He says he hopes that this will change, and that people like him and his family can be supported.
Following a protracted legal battle in the District Court, he moved out with his wife and children.
"My life is destroyed now. I'm actually out begging the State to house me when I didn't need that... I think they should just give me back my structure, put it in place here so we can call it home again."
'I have nowhere else to go'
In Carrick-on-Suir in Co Tipperary, Thomas Carbery had erected a small cabin close to his mother's house, close to the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. He says he also could not get any council housing at the time. He applied to retain the cabin twice but after having lived there for two years, he had to take it down.
He said dismantling it and putting it into storage left him devastated. "I had nowhere else to go." He attempted to organise further meetings with the council, but it was a "point blank no".
Mr Carbery says he sustained a loss of €8,000 euro and eventually moved to Co Clare to try and pursue a business plan.
However, he is now back in Carrick-on-Suir in private rented accommodation with his partner, while he helps out his mother following recent surgery to her knee.
He says he is shocked that the government is now looking at backyard cabins as a solution, when to date it has been hard to apply for planning permission.
He says: "It's too little, too late for some of us. I still have nowhere proper to live. They shouldn't be making people take down their homes."
'The cabin is absolutely perfect'
Laurie O'Donnell and her partner Alan O’Brien built a log cabin about five years ago in Co Cork near the airport at the bottom of her parents' garden.
"The cabin is absolutely perfect. It's a one bedroom cabin between the two of us," she said.
"They're built in three days."
Speaking on RTÉ's Liveline, Ms O'Donnell, said when her partner went back to college, that kind of living provided the only cost-effective accommodation for them if they wanted to stay in Ireland.
"We couldn't rent, not even looking to buy a house. It's just not affordable for people in their twenties at the moment."
She said a lot of people living in such structures were afraid of applying for planning permission, over fears of rejection but she said Cork County Council had signalled it might show more flexibility over the issue.
Ms O'Donnell said all of the electricity, some of it powered by solar panels and sewage runs off the main house.
She said such dwellings need to be brought in on a greater basis as a "big solution" to the housing crisis, which is why they have been promoting their way of living through their Instagram page.
Ms O'Donnell said their cabin is just 25 square metres which would bring it well below the proposed 40 square metre limit.
