The Court of Appeal has set aside an order requiring a mother and her daughter to pay Wicklow County Council’s costs of their High Court challenge over emergency homeless accommodation. It ordered each side to bear its own costs of the High Court proceedings.
The appeal became moot after the Council decided on 20 February 2018 to provide financial assistance towards the appellants’ temporary emergency accommodation on a week-to-week basis. The Court of Appeal heard the parties’ dispute about costs; it did not decide the merits of the original challenge or whether the Council had been legally entitled to refuse assistance in April 2017.
The appellants had sought judicial review of the Council’s refusal of their application. The High Court refused relief in September 2017 and later ordered the appellants to pay the Council’s costs. The Council’s February 2018 decision followed a fresh consideration of their circumstances, including additional documents, the mother’s permission to remain in Ireland, the daughter’s citizenship and schooling, the time they had lived in Ireland, and the mother’s employment search.
In a judgment delivered on 19 December 2019, Mr Justice Murray said the February decision was not made in response to the court proceedings. He accepted that the Council had relied on new information and developments after the original decision. The judge also noted that the Council’s officials said the mother had described financial resources available to her at meetings in April 2017. The mother disputed their accounts, but the appellants did not cross-examine those officials. The costs application therefore had to be considered on the basis of the officials’ affidavit evidence, the judgment said.
The appellants argued that the Council should bear the costs because its later decision had made the case moot, and that the information supporting that decision could have been considered earlier. The Court of Appeal rejected that argument in the circumstances. It said the proceedings had been heard within a short period, and the changes in the appellants’ circumstances that later informed the Council’s decision had not yet occurred by the High Court hearing. The court said it could not conclude that the Council would have reached a different decision if it had reconsidered the matter before that hearing.
The Court of Appeal did not resolve the underlying legal questions about the April 2017 refusal. It vacated the High Court costs order and replaced it with an order that each party bear its own costs of those proceedings.