The Irish High Court has upheld a decision of Wicklow County Council that a woman and child were not considered homeless due to availability of accommodation outside the jurisdiction.
The applicants, Ms. Tee and her daughter Aisling, an Irish citizen, moved to Ireland in 2016 from Malaysia seeking secondary school education for Aisling. Upon arriving in Ireland, Ms. Tee had €10,000 on a credit card and enrolled Aisling initially in a school in Arklow before moving to Bray, where is Aisling now attending school. They had been residing in a B&B as Ms. Tee had been unsuccessful in securing rented accommodation. In February 2017, funds ran out and Ms. Tee and Aisling had resorted to sleeping in a rented car, until the Gardaí put them into contact with a women’s refuge in Bray. Since then Ms. Tee and her daughter had been accommodated by a variety of NGOs and charities, as well as sleeping in Garda stations on a number of occasions.
The applicants were deemed not to satisfy the definition of ‘homeless’ under the Housing Act 1988 as the Council had adduced over the course of two interviews that Ms. Tee had sufficient means to self-accommodate. The Council believed Ms. Tee was receiving money from her family in Malaysia, and had a pension fund which she could access for housing assistance and education. Ms. Tee contested this arguing that the decision was based on errors of fact, given that the family payments were no longer available to her and providing documentation to show that her pension fund could not be accessed.
The Court was of the view that Ms. Tee was not considered homeless as the applicants had a home with Ms. Tee’s mother in Malaysia until June 2016 when they chose to leave for Ireland, and could return there. However, the Court acknowledged that it was within the Council’s discretion to determine who was homeless and the court cannot infer with this determination provided that discretion was not exercised in an arbitrary or capricious manner. The Court equally had no role in allocation of resources by public bodies facing competing claim on resources.
The Court also stated that it could not resolve the conflicts in the affidavits before the court without cross-examination of the various witnesses, which had not taken place, and that the applicants had otherwise failed to prove that the Council had made its decision on an erroneous factual basis. The Court also rejected the applicant’s claims that the Council was denying them the right to shelter pursuant to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Constitution, stating that this right did not extend to permanent housing to be provided by the State.
Click here for the full judgement on Tee & anor v Wicklow County Council.