Traveller family wins High Court ruling on housing-list challenge

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

A family of travellers won a High Court ruling on 19 March 2021 when an application for a split trial in their housing-list challenge was refused.

The family is challenging Wexford County Council’s suspension of them from its housing list after the father’s convictions for two minor public order offences.

The State had sought to have the constitutional issues heard only after the claims against the council, but Ms Justice Niamh Hyland rejected that approach.

She said a modular trial was unlikely to save time or costs and could prejudice the applicants by exposing them to two trials. She proposed that the State respondents bear the costs of the motion and that those costs be stayed pending the trial of the action.