The High Court has allowed parts of a hostel owner’s claim for unpaid accommodation services provided to asylum seekers and homeless people, while ruling that claims arising before 10 March 1999 were statute-barred and rejecting a separate claim for rent at Charlemont Street.
Mr Justice Hogan’s judgment concerns John Meagher’s €390,699 breach of contract claim against Dublin City Council and the Health Service Executive (HSE). The services were provided at hostels in Dublin, including premises on Charlemont Street, Parnell Street and Dorset Street.
The defendants argued that the proceedings should be struck out because of delay. The court refused. It held that the limitation period stopped when proceedings began on 9 March 2005, despite service of the summons in April 2008. It also held that laches did not apply to this common law claim for damages. Although the delay made it harder to reconstruct events, it had not compromised the court’s ability to do justice.
The judge found that Meagher and the HSE had understood differently what was agreed at a 2000 settlement meeting about disputed invoices. Because there was no agreement on an essential term, that settlement did not bind either side. The Council settlement was separate, however, and Meagher was estopped from reopening claims against the Council that arose before October 2000.
For the HSE invoices, the court found that an agreed joint review had not taken place. Given the passage of time and the difficulty of establishing precisely which invoices were due, it allowed Meagher to claim 20% of invoices for services after 10 March 1999, excluding invoices dealt with under other findings. It also found, on the balance of probabilities, that a special rate for Roma asylum seekers was restored in December 2001, and allowed claims at that rate for services after the limitation date.
The court allowed payment claims for people who remained at the Parnell Street and Dorset Street premises after their formal closure: the judgment’s detailed findings identify periods from mid-December 1999 to 31 January 2000 for Parnell Street, and up to 16 October 2000 for Dorset Street. The summary at the end of the judgment appears to reverse the street names for those periods, so the precise allocation is unclear in the source.
The court rejected Meagher’s claim for rent at 2–6 Charlemont Street for 8 September to 19 October 2002. It found the Council had validly terminated the arrangement with effect from 7 September, including because of the premises’ condition. The judge invited counsel to agree the sum due on the claims he had allowed; the judgment does not state a final quantified award.