The High Court ordered members of the extended Gavin family occupying Fingal County Council land at Thomondtown, Lusk, to leave, after finding that the council’s accommodation offers were reasonable in the circumstances. It also dismissed the family’s counterclaim seeking accommodation from the council.
In a judgment delivered on 14 December 2007, Mr Justice Michael Peart granted an injunction restraining the named defendants, people acting with them, and others with knowledge of the order from trespassing on the council’s land. He ordered the defendants and anyone else occupying it to remove themselves, along with vehicles, caravans, mobile homes, scrap, waste and animals in their ownership or control.
The council had brought the proceedings over the family’s occupation of the site. The family’s counterclaim sought suitable Traveller accommodation, including emergency accommodation and services at a halting site. The judgment said about 90 people, including many young children, were encamped there; elsewhere, the judge referred to about 80 people. The judgment also described the extended family as comprising about 13 families.
The family said it had left St Dominick’s Park in Dublin after intimidation and violence, moved to Belfast in February 2005, and returned to Ireland in November that year. The judge accepted there may have been hostility at the Dublin site but found the family had dealt with that situation by moving to Belfast. He concluded that its later return and entry onto Fingal land were choices made at a time of its own choosing, rather than in an emergency.
Fingal offered accommodation in November 2005 and again in writing in February 2006: three halting-site bays at Balbriggan, two houses at Bill Shelly Park, Finglas, and eight bays at St Mary’s Cappagh, Finglas. The family rejected the offers, citing the separation of the extended family across three sites and concerns about proximity to another family. The judge found the offers a reasonable discharge of any obligations Fingal might owe, while expressly leaving open whether such obligations existed.
The court held that the family did not qualify as homeless under the relevant housing legislation because reasonable accommodation had been offered. It found Fingal had considered the need for transient Traveller sites and that its policy of considering Traveller-specific accommodation applications from families indigenous to its area was not unlawful in this case. The judgment noted the family had been invited to apply for emergency accommodation but no application was received.
The court dismissed the counterclaim. The judgment’s stated operative relief was the injunction and removal order; it did not decide that Fingal had a general duty to provide accommodation to the family.