The Supreme Court has allowed an appeal by a father whose household Dublin City Council had classified as a one-person household, ruling that the Council could not consider its housing resources when deciding whether he reasonably required to live with his children.
The judgment, delivered by Justice Mary Irvine on 19 December 2019, concerns the assessment stage under section 20(1) of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009. The court said the Council must assess the applicants’ individual and family circumstances, including whether their stated requirement to live together is genuine and supported by custody or access arrangements. It must do so case by case.
The agreed facts were that the father had joint custody of his three children with their mother and sought social housing support that would let them stay overnight with him about three times a week. The Council accepted his application was made in good faith but treated him as living alone. It said he qualified for a housing assistance payment based on a single-person household, ultimately setting it at €990 a month. The judgment records that the sum was insufficient to meet his needs if a separate bedroom for the children was included.
The father’s judicial review challenge was dismissed by the High Court in November 2018. On appeal, the Supreme Court held that factors such as available housing, the Council’s resources and the risk of under-used bedrooms could not inform the section 20(1) decision about household composition. Those matters may be considered later, when the Council plans services or decides how to prioritise and allocate housing under section 22.
Justice Irvine said the Council’s approach amounted to a blanket policy where joint-custody children were already included in the other parent’s household, preventing an individual assessment of the father’s circumstances. The court also said the High Court had misplaced its reliance on an English and Welsh housing case, which concerned allocation of scarce housing rather than household categorisation.
The ruling did not direct the Council to allocate housing or set a priority for the father. The judgment said that even if a proper assessment recognised his household as including the children, he could still rank low in allocation priority because of competing needs and possible under-use of bedrooms. The Supreme Court did not decide the constitutional or European human-rights arguments raised on appeal; it allowed the appeal on the statutory interpretation issue.