Accommodation has been found for a homeless family who went to court in desperation last month after being refused emergency accommodation by Kildare County Council, the High Court has heard.
All the necessary documents have been signed by the landlord and the young mother and her two children, both aged under three, can move into the accommodation whenever they wish, lawyers for the Council told High Court Deputy Master Angela Denning.
In those circumstances, the action brought by the mother and her children had been resolved apart from costs issues to be addressed later, Ms Denning was told on Thursday.
When the case was initiated last month, the mother, from Co Kildare, said she is “in a desperate situation and my family is at crisis point”.
“I have nowhere to sleep with my children and I have exhausted the assistance and goodwill of family and friends,” she said in court documents. “I have no car to get around or sleep in and within a matter of days I will be forced to sleep rough with two extremely young children.”
She feared the “detrimental “ effect on the health of her children, aged one and two and already with ailments, if the family has to sleep rough.
“I am so exhausted and worried about my children that I cannot sleep at night and in a heighted state of anxiety all the time.”
Since the woman’s relationship with the father of one of her children broke up last October, she and the children have stayed for days here and there with various friends and family but none of those arrangements were suitable, she said.
In one situation, the family all slept on a couch in the two bed apartment of a female friend and her two children.
The family, represented by solicitors Mercy Law, Dublin, cannot be named for legal reasons.
In their judicial review, they sought orders quashing the Council’ refusal of emergency accommodation and directing it to reconsider their application. They alleged the refusal is unlawful on grounds including no proper reasons were given for it.
The mother went to the Council’s offices on January 6th, 7th and 8th seeking emergency accommodation but was told on January 8th it was not considered “appropriate to provide emergency accommodation at this time”.
It was claimed no reasons were given and the failure to provide them with somewhere to stay breaches the Council’s own accommodation scheme and the family’s constitutional rights.
After the January 8th refusal, the family went to Dublin where Dublin City Council gave them three nights emergency homeless accommodation on January 8th, 9th and 10th. After that, she again sought to rely on family and friends but such arrangements were very difficult and unsustainable, she said.
On January 19th, Kildare Council again refused her emergency homeless accommodation leaving her “at crisis point”.
The family receives rent allowance from the Department of Social Protection but had only been able to identify just three suitable properties falling within the rent allowance payable and their price range, the court heard. None of the owners of those properties were willing to rent them to recipients of rent allowance.
The woman said her weekly income is about €246 and she receives €280 child benefit monthly. The father of her youngest child has failed to pay any maintenance and she was awaiting her one parent family payment, she added.
The mother has been on the council’s housing list for some years, having gone on it prior to her children being born.
