The High Court has refused a judicial review application by Elizabeth Mulhare and her mother, Barbara, who sought an order requiring Cork County Council to provide them with suitably adapted housing closer to Cork City and within five miles of Cork University Hospital.
In a judgment delivered on 5 May 2017, Ms Justice Baker said the court could not direct the council to allocate a house in a particular area. She refused all the relief sought, including orders to quash the council’s response and to require it to provide housing. She made no finding on whether the applicants’ current accommodation in Fermoy was suitable.
Elizabeth Mulhare, then aged 28, has cerebral palsy, profound physical and mental disabilities and persistent respiratory infections. Her mother is her carer. The judgment said Elizabeth attended a hospital clinic and GP in Cork City, about 43 kilometres from their home.
The applicants’ home was accepted as unsuitable for Elizabeth’s needs. It lacked level access to a shower room and taps, and a bedroom doorway wide enough for wheelchair access; the house also had mould and damp. The council had offered to carry out repairs and adaptations recommended by an occupational therapist. The applicants sought rehousing closer to Cork City, citing the strain of travel and the need to be near Elizabeth’s medical care.
The judge said housing applications must be considered reasonably under the authority’s statutory scheme and within available resources. Cork County Council’s scheme placed disability, medical and compassionate needs sixth among its listed priority categories. The judgment recorded 7,480 approved applicants on the county housing list, including 557 with needs based on physical disability, and accepted the council’s evidence that no suitable home was available in the narrowly defined area sought.
The requested area also raised a jurisdictional difficulty: the evidence suggested it might fall within Cork City Council’s area, but that council was not a party to the case. The judge said an order requiring Cork County Council to provide housing in another authority’s area could not be performed. The applicants had separately applied to Cork City Council, which declined to consider the application further while rent arrears from a previous tenancy remained unpaid or without an agreed repayment arrangement.
The court rejected the applicants’ argument that the refusal breached Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It said Article 8 does not generally create a right to a home of one’s choice, and found that the county council’s offer of repairs and modifications adequately provided for the applicants’ Article 8 rights in the circumstances. The judgment did not decide the dispute over whether the mother had declined a charity’s offer of free taxi transport.