The High Court has permanently restrained Bernard and Helen McDonagh from trespassing on lands at Ashline, Kilrush Road, Ennis, and dismissed their counterclaim against Clare County Council.
Mr Justice Allen found that the couple’s week-to-week tenancy of No. 1 Ashline ended after the house was badly damaged by fire in November 2012. Although Helen McDonagh signed a tenancy-surrender form, it was not delivered to the council and Bernard McDonagh did not sign it. The judge rejected the council’s arguments that the tenancy had been surrendered in writing or frustrated by the fire. He concluded instead that it had been surrendered through the couple’s conduct: they left the uninhabitable house, made clear they did not intend to return, and the council took possession and secured it.
The judge said that even if the tenancy had continued, it would not have allowed the couple to place caravans elsewhere on the site. They brought mobile homes to the roadside outside Ashline in September 2017, after leaving private rented accommodation in Ennis. The court had made an interlocutory order requiring the caravans and associated vehicles to be removed in January 2018. The full action was heard over three days in June 2019.
The couple argued that a January 2014 council letter and the Clare Traveller Accommodation Programme 2014–2018 created a legitimate expectation that Ashline would be redeveloped as traveller-specific group housing. The judge found no such promise. The programme called for redevelopment proposals to be invited, and the council had repeatedly said the couple would be offered a house if Ashline was redeveloped for social housing. The planned development would be open to the wider community.
Their counterclaim also challenged the council’s performance of duties under the Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act 1998, including consultation, accommodation policy and use of allocated funding. The judge treated those claims as a public-law challenge brought through plenary proceedings. He found them too vague and late, and said the court could not substitute its view for the council’s policy choices. He also found that funding allocations represented approved expenditure to be recouped after costs were incurred, rather than cash immediately available to the council.
The court ordered a permanent injunction restraining trespass on the lands and dismissed the counterclaim. It did not order the council to build or provide the couple with a house.