Four Courts, Dublin
This afternoon.
Mary Carolan, in The Irish Times, reports:
“A separated father of three with joint custody and access rights has won a significant Supreme Court appeal over Dublin City Council’s categorisation of him on its housing list as a one-person household.
“…The five judge court’s unanimous ruling has implications for more than 800 separated persons in similar situations on the council’s housing list who were treated as single person households, meaning a lower Housing Assistant Payment (HAP), after their former partner was categorised as a larger household with a larger HAP.
“…The children stay with their father three nights weekly in his one bed apartment and spend the other four nights with their mother in a larger unit.
“He gets €990 monthly Housing Assistance Payment (HAP), a single person’s rate while she gets a larger HAP as a separated mother.”
Separated father wins Supreme Court appeal on housing support (Mary Carolan, The Irish Times)
Gender Hap Gap. No surprise. Family law in this country is a total joke when it comes to fairness anyway. It’s all about the division of assets unfairly.
The taxpayer will be thrilled to hear this.
Good decision
This should put manners on the lads cribbing about the elevation of Judge Caroline Costello and Judge Marie Baker
The cribbing wouldn’t be mostly coming from male members on the bench by any chance?
You might say that
But I couldn’t possibly comment
Ha!
In other court news:
Charlie Chawke without a leg to stand on in 33K award to Traveller family.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/circuit-court/traveller-family-awarded-33-000-over-shocking-pub-case-1.4120458
…ouch!
Great to see the status quo challenged, and corrected. Equality for all!
+V
Agreed. But should someone like this get a bigger home only needed for 3-days-a-week before a homeless family is housed?
Perhaps he should move into the family home for the 3 days and the mother can use his place?
Build enough homes and you wouldn’t have that problem.
I wholeheartedly agree. We need to build more homes.
But until we get to that stage how do we (fairly) allocate the ones we have?
You leave it to the Housing professionals in the respective Local Authority housing depts Cian
In the meantime don’t let this case get your panties ride up between yere bits
It’s HAP entitlement and therefore in the hands of the Private Landlord to decide who to let their property out to.
I’m surprised you say that. This judgement values two parents that are equal in terms of care-giving to their children. We know nothing else about their financial circumstances but we do know that in this case a father has been treated fairly when historically our family courts have assumed all benefits should go to the mother. Too many dads get a rough deal in family separations.
+F4J
How would that work in a highly charged situation where civility is at an all time low? It wouldn’t. In all fairness I don’t understand why it isn’t divided as per the care arrangement so if its 50/50 the allocation per child is allocated 50/50 to each parent or 60/40 or 70/30, whatever. Unless one of the parents is not having them overnight at all then they need to be able to provide them with a bedroom. I would say some of the issue here is the administration required to manage something like this. Child benefit is currently only paid to the mother (in a joint custody arrangement) and then you rely on her to pass on what is due to the father.
Separated families are a common feature of Irish life now (and with the new divorce law commenced on 1st December more families will be moving out of unhappy situations)so the family benefits section are going to have to adapt to deal with that in a better fashion.
As far as I know both sides in a joint custody agreement are permitted the full allocation of a single income household tax suite of credits
So its only right that HAP and Social Welfare assistance (s) mirror that recognition
Health Warning tho’
Neither tax or family law would be my areas of practice
Given that rents are at an all-time high, I’d have thought dividing the HAP allowance would render it useless. (Unless tenants are allowed to supplement it themselves, which used to be against the rules.) Still, it’s nice to see fathers getting recognition in the family courts.