Family in one-bedroom house 'not overcrowding'

A Traveller couple and their three young children who are living in a one-bedroom chalet on a temporary halting site in Killarney since late 2004 have lost their High Court action to be provided with a three-bedroomed council house as a matter of urgency.

While the family are all sharing one bed in the chalet, their conditions do not constitute “overcrowding” within the meaning of the Housing Acts as the children are all aged under ten years, Mr Justice Michael Peart noted.

The judge rejected claims that Killarney Town Council had breached either the Housing Acts, its Traveller Accommodation Programme or the anti-discrimination and equality provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights in its treatment of the housing application of Vera and Thomas Dooley and their three children.

The council assessed the family in 2006 as requiring a three-bedroom house but claimed it was entitled to allocate housing on the basis of who is in most need. The Dooley’s circumstances placed them in the sixth category of preference for allocation of housing.

Mr Justice Peart said the Council was entitled to act as it had and had not breached the requirements of the Housing Acts or its own Traveller Accommodation Programme in doing so.

The council was entitled to a fair margin of appreciation in how it implemented its programme, although it must always make its allocation on the basis of greatest need, which was not the same as length of time on the housing list, he said.

In an ideal world every person on a housing list would get a house without delay “but none of us inhabit such an ideal world”, the judge said. Budgetary and resource limitations existed and it was inevitable delays would occur.

The family had failed to establish the council was permitting them to “needlessly languish”.

The judge noted the council is developing a scheme of 60 houses at Dirrane and the family may be allocated a house in that scheme.

In the interim, he noted that, during the hearing of the case, the family had accepted, on a temporary basis and without prejudice to their wish to be allocated a house, the council’s offer of a replacement one-bedroom chalet with a two-bedroom unit attached to it.

He hoped this would be provided “without delay”.