A NUMBER of Travellers from the Rathkeale area of Limerick have claimed before the High Court they are being discriminated against over a local authority’s refusal to allow them to buy out their rented council homes.
The applicants secured permission from Mr Justice Michael Peart yesterday to bring judicial review proceedings aimed at quashing Limerick County Council’s refusal to allow them to buy four council houses at Fairview, Rathkeale.
James and Julie McCarthy; Mary Sheridan; Margaret and Bidel McCarthy and Richard and Mary Slattery applied last December to buy their homes under a tenant-purchase scheme but were told they could not do so in the interest of “good estate management”.
Cormac Ó Dulacháin SC, for the families, said the council had said the refusal was because a number of houses already sold under the tenant-purchase scheme had been bought by “trader families” and were subsequently boarded up and not used as permanent residences.
Boarded-up homes were “all too prominent” a feature of Rathkeale which is unique in that almost 50 per cent of its population were Travellers, the council said in a letter last February.
The council claims it also advised the families that when they were given tenancies, the houses would not be offered for sale.
In their proceedings, the applicants argue the council’s decision is unlawful and discriminates against them due to their status as members of the Travelling community.
They contend the refusal breaches the council’s Traveller accommodation programme, contravenes the Equal Status Act 2000 and breaches an EC directive from June 2000 implementing the principle of equal treatment of all people irrespective of ethnic origin.