The High Court has refused an application by Ireland and the Attorney General to split a family’s challenge to their suspension from Wexford County Council’s housing list into separate trial stages.
In a judgment delivered on 19 March 2021, Ms Justice Niamh Hyland ruled that the case should proceed as a unitary trial. She found no clear saving in court time or party costs from holding a preliminary hearing on the claims against the Council, with any constitutional challenge to follow later.
The proceedings arise from the Council’s decision on 29 August 2019 to suspend the applicants, a Traveller family, from its housing list after the father was convicted of two minor public order offences. The family challenges the legal basis and application of the Council’s anti-social behaviour strategy. The judgment records that the Council disputes the family’s claim that a specific house had already been allocated and then withdrawn.
The State respondents sought a separate stage for the family’s claims against the Council, arguing that success on those claims could dispose of the claims against the State. The applicants opposed the proposal, saying the statutory interpretation issues overlapped with their constitutional challenge and that two stages could add cost and delay.
Justice Hyland said the case involved significant disputed facts, including the events at a meeting on 29 August 2019, the reasons for the suspension and whether a house had been allocated and its allocation rescinded. She noted that no written decision had been provided to the applicants. The State respondents had no role in those factual disputes, but the judge considered their submissions could assist when the court interprets the statutory provisions, given the constitutional issues that might arise from that interpretation.
The judge also accepted that separate stages could require two judgments and potentially two appeals, and could prolong the case. She acknowledged some prejudice to the State from its involvement in factual matters unrelated to it, but said case management might reduce that burden. In her assessment, the potential prejudice to the applicants from a modular trial outweighed that concern.
The ruling decides only how the proceedings are to be tried. It does not determine the family’s underlying claims against the Council or the State. On costs, the judge proposed that the State respondents bear the costs of the motion, stayed in the usual way pending trial. Parties were given two weeks to make submissions if they sought a different costs decision; absent submissions, the court would make the order proposed.